----- Original Message ----- From: "OrionWorks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Photosynthesis upper limits are unclear
<snip> > I find something very disturbing about exploiting this scenario. The Amazon basin is rapidly loosing its natural forests at an alarming rate due to slash and burning techniques to help feed Brazil's growing population of hungry mouths. > > I realize you are saying "deforested and now fallow" land, but I fear it might end there. > > Soon t here will be no Amazon forests left nor any food worth growing because the basin is not designed to grow traditional crops. They will end up ruining the land for both crops or the original tropical forests. > > The losses are invaluable in undiscovered herbs and other exotic chemistry that could help mankind. ------------------------------ The Amazon rain forests are being depleted as a result of policies of the Brazilian government to encourage settlement by farmers hopeful to 'develop' the land by farming it, as US homesteaders did a century or more ago. The catch is that the nutrients are in the forest canopy, not the earth. Slash and burn gives a year or two of crops, then the land is exhausted and the farmer moves on. The US heartland had rich soil feet deep, somlething that exists or existed in only a few parts of the world. Humans have eaten themselves out of house and home in various parts of the world through short-sighted policies, Easter Island being a notable but not the only example. Read Jared Diamond's book "Collapse". Mike Carrell
