Brazil "soy king" sees Amazon as food solution

Brazil "soy king" sees Amazon as food solution

www.alertnet.org

RIO DE JANEIRO, April 25 (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 wheth

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I don't think this would be a good idea. Yeah it would feed more people, but it would have worse consequences in the future. Kind of like trading survival in the present for assured destruction in the future. Not a good idea in my view.

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Need more deforestation in the name of less dependence on foreign oil. You go Brazilians!

reply to post by MikeboydUS


Yeah that's a horrible idea. Rain forests are the lungs of this planet. Without them, most of us would die. There's plenty of cropland on this planet, we're just not using it efficiently or effectively.

What we need is more rain forests, not less. The majority of the planet's species live in rain forests, especially the amazon. To cut it down for human food would be a travesty.

I'm glad to see the "soy king" is thinking with his wallet and not his brain. Dumbass.

[edit on 4/25/2008 by biggie smalls]

Instead of cutting down forests, maybe people should invest in reversing desertification. Really if we ever hope to Terraform places like Mars or beyond, we have to start here on earth by fixing deserts and other wastelands. How can we ever terraform and colonize Mars if we can't even stop deserts and climate change on earth? Seems kind of silly when you really think about it.

Cool idea. And once we rid ourself of that little nuisance (rain forests), when we will reach another food crisis we could evaporate oceans and there you go - new Mars. No need to travel anywhere. Money saved (not to mention - made).

You know I actually just wrote a paper on reversing desertification. Its not impossible, but certainly not the easiest thing to do in the world.

I suggest watching this video to learn how it can be done:







We could terraform this planet to be another "Garden of Eden," but too much money is being made right now due to "scarce" resources. There's plenty of food and water to feed everyone on this planet, and then some. There's plenty of room for all of us to live, and then some. There's plenty of everything.

However, there's something called government that gets in the way of feeding, clothing, and housing everyone here. Oh and greed.

Reversing climate change will be a little more difficult. We would need to stop emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitric oxide as well as stop converting all our land to pastoral use.

[edit on 4/25/2008 by biggie smalls]

reply to post by MikeboydUS


I emphasize on something like that in my classes showing students about the dangers of desertification. Showing pictures before and after of the Aral Sea and what is causing it, which is irrigation which prevents the Aral Sea from replacing any lost water. Not related to dealing with jungles and forests, but I've taught the students about the deforestation in Europe going back centuries that changed the landscape.