Opportunists See Dollar Signs as Food Prices Spur Rainforest Destruction

What do you know, chaos and suffering is causing some folks in the position of power to take advantage of the situation. Will wonders never cease?

As people are starting to get worried about the future of our food sources, farmers in Brazil are getting excited about the prospect of making money by cutting down trees in the rainforest, burning the land and making way for pasture and crops.

Envirolink has it:

“At the very edge of the agricultural frontier, it’s very dynamic and that’s why you get statistics for deforestation that swing wildly from one year to the next,” said Roberto Cavalcanti of Conservation International.

“A small shift in food prices can have a big impact on whether it’s economical or not to move into the forest.”

The governor of Mato Grosso, one of Brazil’s biggest farming states, last week advocated more deforestation as a solution to the sharp rises in staples such as rice that are threatening to push millions of people into hunger.

“There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees,” Blairo Maggi, also Brazil’s largest soybean producer and widely known as the “King of Soy”, told the Folha news agency.

This seems like a really stupid move… at the first sign of a food crisis, we start moving in on the rainforests, which we’ve been trying to protect for decades? Isn’t there a better way, people? I’m no expert, but in the times of climate change and worries over the future of the entire planet, cutting down trees in the rainforest appears to be a very bad idea.

Link [Envirolink]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Related Posts:

Brazil Uses Local, Natural Condoms to Protect Rainforest, Prevent AIDS
1/40th of the World’s Rainforests Cleared in 5 Years
President Bush Claims to be a Green Local Food Proponent in Latest Speech
More Criticism for Ethanol: Now it’s Affecting Food Prices
Earl Butz, The Man Who Killed the Family Farm, Has Died