Ranching & Soy Farming On Track To Destroy 40% Of Amazon By 2050 - AFP

[hatrack]

PARIS (AFP) - Cattle ranchers and soybean farmers will destroy four-tenths of Brazil's Amazonian forest by 2050 on present trends, threatening biodiversity and adding hugely to the global warming problem, a study says. The paper, published on Thursday in Nature, the British weekly science journal, says that the Brazilian government's conservation strategies fall far short of what is needed to prevent escalating destruction.

"Expansion of the cattle and soy industries in the Amazon basin has increased deforestation rates and will soon push all-weather highways into the region's core," say the authors, led by Britaldo Silveira Soares-Filho of the University of Minas Gerais.

"By 2050, current trends in agricultural expansion will eliminate a total of 40 percent of Amazon forests, including at least two-thirds of the forest cover of six major watersheds and 12 ecoregions. "(...) One quarter of the 382 mammalian species examined will lose more than 40 percent of the forest within their Amazon ranges." Trees and vegetation that have been chopped down will, through decay or burning, surrender their stock of carbon dioxide (CO2) -- the "greenhouse gas" that plants store up as a natural process of growth.

Eventually, between 25 and 40 billion tonnes of CO2 will be released to the atmosphere from the 40-percent forest loss, the researchers warn. By comparison, annual global emissions of CO2, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal, are around seven billion tonnes.

EDIT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060322/sc_afp/environmentspecies_060322194936

[Systematic Chaos]

1. This issue bugs the HELL out of me (soy farming)

I use a lot of soy products, and I get organic ones whenever possible. I believe that soy is a healthy alternative to many of the foods we enjoy, and it annoys me to think that so much of the arable land in the US is actually used just to grow corn for our livestock. The land HERE could be used for enough corn and soy to feed half the planet, if only we weren't so addicted to poultry, pork and beef. :(

[grasswire]

2. ironically....

...I saw a report on television the other day that corn is being farmed in the southern Americas to be used for ethanol fuel. Massive corn farms turned to biodiesel fuel for cars there.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Did you know that a lot of SOY is fed to cattle??

If you fatten cattle on just corn, you reach a point of diminishing returns, where eating more corn does not result in much more weight gain. The "solution":eyes: is to add more protein, in the form of soy meal, to the feed. The amount of protein in the beef is, IIRC, considerably less than the amount in the soy.

I turned vegetarian because I learned how much environmental cost is incurred by converting vegetation into meat. It makes no sense in terms of efficiency. Grazing animals make sense only where the land supports only sparse vegetation or a short growing season. Using good farmland to turn out beef is just plain nuts.

See Jeremy Rifkin's "Beyond Beef" for the figures on soy consumption vs corn. (Not a perfect book, but lots of info.)

[Odin2005]

3. Logging isn't the only thing that's distroying the Amazon...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x46448