Chris, Working from memory, it seems to me that the rain forest encompasses an area of 2.5 million square miles.
If, as is mentioned 40% of this will be lost, my thought is that a lot of soya can be produced on one million square miles. Actually most of the land of Brazil is not much used but is held by large landholders. It's probably changed now, but my favorite is the 84,000 acre "cattle ranch" containing 200 animals. It's probably government policy rather than the free market that encourages soya production. The tax inducements offered corporations to produce ranch land from the rain forest enticed such farming companies as Xerox and Volkswagen to tear down large areas of the forest. They didn't harvest the trees pulled down by cables between two tractors (the tree root systems are weak) - just burned them. One calculation estimated that $250 million of hardwood was burned in the frantic rush to take advantage of silly government policies. Rain forest land is very poor - will grow very little. I would expect lots of fertilizer to be introduced. This expense may be offset by government policies - I don't know. But I suspect much. Harry ********************************* Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 818 352-4141 ********************************* -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 10:59 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order ...and the fast-food itself has made even longer journeys... The orders at least don't burn that much fossil fuel... http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0406-05.htm Greenpeace Investigation Links Fast Food Giants to Amazon Destruction Campaign launched to hold McDonald's accountable LONDON - April 6 - Greenpeace today exposed the role played by McDonald's in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. (1) As part of a new campaign to tackle the latest threat to the Amazon, Greenpeace has completed a year-long undercover investigation into the global trade in Amazon soya. The findings are today published in a new report, Eating up the Amazon (2). Using satellite images, aerial surveillance, previously unreleased government documents and on-the-ground monitoring, Greenpeace traced soya from criminal rainforest destruction to McDonald's restaurants and to supermarkets across Europe. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
