The Rape of The Rainforest... And The Man Behind it

[Guest guest]

The rape of the rainforest... and the man behind it

By Michael McCarthy and Andrew Buncombe

20 May 2005

 

Source >

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=639814

 

 

It is stark. It is scarcely believable. But the

ruthless obliteration of the Amazon rainforest

continues at a headlong rate new figures reveal - and

today we reveal the man who more than any other

represents the forces making it happen.

 

He is Blairo Maggi, the millionaire farmer and

uncompromising politician presiding over the Brazilian

boom in soya bean production. He is known in Brazil as

O Rei da Soja - the King of Soy.

 

Brazilian environmentalists are calling him something

else - the King of Deforestation. For the soya boom,

feeding a seemingly insatiable world market for soya

beans as cattle feed, is now the main driver of

rainforest destruction.

 

Figures show that last year the rate of forest

clearance in the Amazon was the second highest on

record as the soy boom completed its third year. An

area of more than 10,000 square miles - nearly the

size of Belgium - was cut down, with half the

destruction in the state of Mato Grosso, where Mr

Maggi, whose Maggi Group farming business is the

world's biggest soya bean producer, also happens to be

the state governor.

 

Mr Maggi sheds no tears over lost trees. In 2003, his

first year as governor, the rate of deforestation in

Mato Grosso more than doubled.

 

In an interview last year he said: " To me, a 40 per

cent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything

at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what

we are doing here. We are talking about an area larger

than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is

nothing at all to get worried about. "

 

Many people violently disagree. The survival of the

Amazon forest, which sprawls over 4.1 million sq km

(1.6 million sq miles) and covers more than half of

Brazil's land area, may be the key to the survival of

the planet. The jungle is sometimes called the world's

" lung " because its trees produce much of the world's

oxygen. It is thought nearly 20 per cent of it has

already been destroyed by legal and illegal logging,

and clearance for cattle ranching. But the soya boom

has dramatically stepped up the pace of destruction.

 

It began on the back of the BSE crisis in Britain,

when the feed given to cattle suddenly became a matter

of intense public concern. Cattle feed producers

around the world switched to soya as an untainted

source.

 

The boom was intensified by the fact that Brazil - in

contrast to the US and Argentina - did not go down the

GM route in its agriculture, so when most European

countries went GM-free, it was from Brazil that they

sought their soya bean supplies. Europe now imports 65

per cent of its soya from Brazil. A further impetus to

the boom is coming from China, whose emerging middle

class wants to eat more and more meat - so the demand

for animal feed is soaring.

 

The soya boom is bitterly criticised by

environmentalists. " It is turning the rainforest into

cattle feed. It is gross, " said John Sauven, head of

the rainforest campaign for Greenpeace UK.

 

It first showed up in the deforestation figures in

2003, when after falling or staying steady for eight

years, the rate of destruction leapt by 40 per cent in

a single year, from 18,170 sq km to 25,500 sq km.

 

Since then the rate has stayed at its new high level,

with 24,597 sq km cut down the next year, and, as the

figures released yesterday by the Brazilian

environment ministry showed, from satellite photos and

other data, no less than 26,130 sq km of rainforest

was cut down in the 12 months to August 2004. This was

a further leap of 6 per cent on the year before and

caused immense dismay, not least because President

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government adopted an

action plan last year to protect the Amazon. The

Environment Minister, Marina Silva, who is from the

Amazon state of Acre, said the figure was high, but

promised the country would " work to fight this in a

structured way, with lasting and effective action,

involving all sectors " .

 

Greenpeace's Amazon co-ordinator Paulo Adario said the

scale of the destruction was a tragedy, and showed

that deforestation was " not a priority for the Lula

government " .

 

Mr Maggi, whose company grossed $600m last year, does

not see the future as one of restricted soya

plantings. He has called for a tripling of the amount

of land planted with soybeans during the next decade

in Mato Grosso, and his company announced last year

that it intended to double the area it has in

production.

 

How demand for soya drives the destruction

 

The production of soya beans is now a vital industry

for Brazil. Agribusiness is the country's number one

export earner, and soya is the principal commodity.

The current government under President Lula actively

promotes soya export as a means to earn foreign

exchange for debt payments.

 

From the 1960s, the Brazilian government promoted soya

cultivation so Brazil could become self sufficient in

vegetable oils. Soya was increasingly planted on

large-scale, fully mechanised farms in the south and

the states on the Atlantic coast.

 

In the past, some agro-engineers believed soya would

never threaten the rainforest, because of climatic

limitations and soil conditions. Soya was thought to

be " as adaptable to conditions of the tropical climate

as a panda bear to the African savannah " .

 

However, the development of new varieties has enabled

the rapid expansion of soya plantations north, into

the tropical states where the rainforest is situated.

 

Between 1995 and 2004, the area cultivated with soya

increased by 77 per cent in the centre-west, with Mato

Grosso becoming the single biggest producer. Now soya

is rapidly advancing from all sides toward the

heartland of the Amazon, fuelling massive

deforestation.

 

Two companies dominate Brazil's soya business. Gruppo

Maggi, owned by Blairo Maggi, Mato Grosso's governor,

is considered to be the world's largest individual

soya producer. The number one soy-exporter is the

giant US grains business, Cargill.

 

Michael McCarthy

21 May 2005 09:37

 

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