Growers and Grocers

Photo credit: Soybean photo is from the USDA’s ARS Image Gallery.

The January 2007 National Geographic magazine has a thought-provoking story about one of the most intense pressures on the Amazon rainforest: large-scale industrial agriculture. Last of the Amazon visits the lands around Brazil’s BR-163 road (the “soy highway”) and finds a region in transformation from rainforest to agricultural powerhouse, with soybeans as the main crop.

The full article is not available on-line, but the National Geographic website has a photo gallery, an interactive map, and other features. Here are the first two paragraphs:

The market forces of globalization are invading the Amazon, hastening the demise of the forest and thwarting its most committed stewards. In the past three decades, hundreds of people have died in land wars; countless others endure fear and uncertainty, their lives threatened by those who profit from the theft of timber and land. In this Wild West frontier of guns, chain saws, and bulldozers, government agents are often corrupt and ineffective—or ill-equipped and outmatched. Now, industrial-scale soybean producers are joining loggers and cattle ranchers in the land grab, speeding up destruction and further fragmenting the great Brazilian wilderness.

During the past 40 years, close to 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down—more than in all the previous 450 years since European colonization began. The percentage could well be far higher; the figure fails to account for selective logging, which causes significant damage but is less easily observable than clear-cuts. Scientists fear that an additional 20 percent of the trees will be lost over the next two decades. If that happens, the forest’s ecology will begin to unravel. Intact, the Amazon produces half its own rainfall through the moisture it releases into the atmosphere. Eliminate enough of that rain through clearing, and the remaining trees dry out and die. When desiccation is worsened by global warming, severe droughts raise the specter of wildfires that could ravage the forest. Such a drought afflicted the Amazon in 2005, reducing river levels as much as 40 feet (12 meters) and stranding hundreds of communities. Meanwhile, because trees are being wantonly burned to create open land in the frontier states of Pará, Mato Grosso, Acre, and Rondônia, Brazil has become one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The danger signs are undeniable.

The issue also includes a series of extraordinary photographs of hummingbirds of South America (hummingbird factoid: the Ruby-throated hummingbird — one of the few species to spend time in North America — weighs about 3 grams, yet manages to fly non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico, a trip of 18-20 hours). You’ll find on-line gallery of the photos here, but they look much better on paper.