Governor Of Matto Grosso State (Brazil) - Cut Down Amazon To Grow More Soy, "Solve" Food Crisis

[hatrack]

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - More of the Amazon rain forest should be cut down to make way for farmland to help ease the global food crisis, the governor of a big Brazilian farming state was quoted on Friday as saying.

Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso state and Brazil's largest soy producer, was quoted in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper as defending deforestation.

"With the worsening of the global food crisis, the time is coming when it will be inevitable to discuss whether we preserve the environment or produce more food. There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees," said Maggi, a farming pioneer in the vast western state who is widely known as the "King of Soy."

"In this moment of crisis, the world needs to understand that the country has space to raise its production." Folha said the areas with the most deforestation, legal and illegal, in the second half of 2007 were in Mato Grosso, a huge agricultural state in western Brazil still half covered by rain forest.

EDIT

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/35356

[LynneSin]

1. I read an article about this in National Geographic

Seems our country's demand for soy products because they are 'healthier and vegan' options may enable global warming. Brazil is turning rainforests into soy fields to keep up with demands.

Perhaps Tofu isn't the answer. But I think that Tofu should be marked where it comes from and people should stop buying Brazil soy products if Brazil doesn't do anything to stop deforestation.

[amandabeech]

3. There is a huge demand in East Asian countries for soy, too.

Particularly as China becomes more wealthy, its citizens are eating more protein, and some of that is soy.

Also, soy is used as animal feed or supplements for just about everything from chickens to beef to fish. It is an incredibly useful product.

Soy also is a legume, which means that it, or organims associated with it, make their own nitrogen fertilizer. A few years ago, before corn ethanol, a farmer would rotate corn and soybeans, because the soybeans left nitrogen in the soil so that the farmer didn't have to purchase as much nitrogen fertilizer for his /her thirsty corn.

As to supply--certainly, many of us here in the U.S. and in North America could eat less. However, increasing affluence in China and continued growth of the world population are putting intense pressure on food supplies, in addition to recent weather-related crop failures.

I read an article fairly recently about African farming, and how the application of lime on the fields increased productivity. The African soils are very weathered and have a low pH which does not make a hospitable environment for most food crops. Perhaps we could help Africa in this small way to feed itself.

And in the end, we need to stop the world's population from expanding. There are still countries where large families are the rule. We have to find a way to convince those families, many in south Asia and Africa to use birth control and have 2 or maybe 3 children only. It is the only way.

[Zachstar]

4. That is the elephant in the room.

Seriously just throw population control out. It will never work.

Better farming with such better ideas can ease the strain on food supplies and grow the fuel to run the tractors as well... One of the goals of getting lpatops full of into out to places deep in Africa is education on how to use the meager supplies to grow more on the land.

If we can get off of fossil fuels we are on the first step towards easing the problem of starvation.

[amandabeech]

7. Population control IS working in many places.

Take Mexico for example.

Back in the '70s each Mexican woman was having 6 or 7 children, and, thankfully, most survived to adulthood.

Within the past 10-15 years, the Mexican government has "gotten religion" on the birth control topic, and Mexican women now have 2.5 children in their lifetime. In the U.S., they have more--3.5 or so--probably because conditions here are better.

The Mexican situation is not much different from many places in Latin America.

One thing that helps get family size down is education and empowerment of women. Efforts on that front in Africa and southern Asia might bear fruit.

I've been energy-aware since 2002, but I am not nearly as convinced as you are that alternatives, particularly biofuels, will be a big part of the answer to our transportation energy problems.

As an aside, Africa does not grow as much food by tractor as here in the west and Latin America. The farms are very small and much of the cropland is worked by hand. Just a rototiller would be helpful there. However, soil improvement would make a BIG difference, IMHO.

[notesdev]

5. population

>And in the end, we need to stop the world's population from expanding.

The question is, is our need so dire that it is worth killing hundreds of millions, perhaps even a billion or more people to achieve that goal?

The tricky part of taking on population issues is the thorny question of how exactly one would go about reducing the population, without reducing the human race to the status of livestock.

[amandabeech]

8. I think that we could do a stabilization and then decrease without

killing off a bunch of people.

The idea is to decrease fertility dramatically.

In fact, some studies, and I don't have time right now to find them, see population stabilizing and then falling off due to:

1. education of women

2. government efforts

3. improving conditions in developing countries.

I do not advocate any kind of population reduction by war or starvation. However, the way things are going, those horrible events may not be entirely preventable, although we should try our best to keep things on an even keel.

[Zachstar]

9. I like the education and improving conditions part.

Many recent advances have facilitated better education in remote areas in Africa.

Small LED lights fitted to foot chargers can be used to facilitate reading at night without having to burn more wood for light.

Cheap E-paper designs fitted with small yet large space chips could mean education filled E-Books could be distributed in the many millions at a price that could be as small as 20 dollars with mass production.


Efforts like Wikipedia have lead to ways to quickly translate important articles and sources for the benefit of others. Papers that are written on things like improving crop yields with simple devices can be quickly be made into understandable terms and given to communities.


I want to give a round of applause of the many university students and others who have invested time to invent devices for improving the conditions in Africa with REAL means and not just handouts.

Such as efficient and cheap cooker designs and cheap water filter designs.

[amandabeech]

10. I'll pass on wiki,

but take you up on the cheap cookers and the night lights.

[Zachstar]

11. Say what you will about Wiki but it has revolutionized quick info gathering.

Want to quickly know what other Aircraft use the DC-3 engine?

Want to quickly learn about a plant?

Want to know what was the payload on STS-114?

Granted if ANY kind of controversy exists on the subject it means it can't be trusted but that is less than 10 percent of anything on Wiki.


I would trust it over cooperate influenced main encyclopedias.

[amandabeech]

15. To each his or her own. n/t

[malakai2]

12. sure we could

But I doubt that's the way it will unfold. If I were betting, I'd put everything on war and starvation. Sociologically, economically, I do not see how we'll reach the critical mass of acceptance for the sorts of things we'd need to accomplish 1, 2, and 3. Even if we could accomplish those things we'd still need to find a way to stabilize global population fairly soon, and decrease it fairly quickly thereafter. That's a lambda significantly less than 1 on average. In a world where young people who decide not to have children are not exactly celebrated.

[amandabeech]

16. It sounds like you're ready to give up.

I'm not.

[soothsayer]

2. Jackasses.

[The2ndWheel]

6. It's time to embrace the horror

We must finish what we have begun. Or something like that anyway.

[diane in sf]

13. ignorant moron...

[Delphinus]

14. It seems to me,

he might be putting the cart before the horse.

If we don't take care of the environment, what we destroy so that we can eat will destroy us in another way. We might be able to raise soy crops, but we won't be able to breathe.

The Amazon, if I recall correctly, is(are) considered the lungs of Mother Earth.

(Edit for grammar)