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INSIGHT

Deforestation in the Amazon

Aired November 29, 2006 - 14:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What's eating the Amazon? The rainforest is being cut away to make room for soybean farming. Could the culprits really be chickens in China?
Hello and welcome.

Scientists call it the Butterfly Effect, the idea that an event as small and remote as the flapping of an insect's wings could create a ripple in the air that turns into a distant tornado. Well, there's something similar when it comes to soybeans and the rainforest in Brazil.

People eat animals. A lot of those animals eat soybeans. And a lot of those soybeans are, in a sense, eating the trees in the Amazon.

On our program today, the soybean effect.

Karl Penhaul has this look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Smoke plumes billow from the Amazon rainforest. A fire crackles as it gnaws into the jungle. From the air around the river port city of Santarem, you can see the destruction on a massive scale. Big farmers are carving out huge fields for commercial agriculture, especially soybeans, a valuable export commodity.

(on camera): Looking at this field now, it's hard to imagine it ever was virgin Amazon rainforest, but at one time the trees and plants would have been so thick here, it would have been impossible to walk.

(voice-over): Here in a church on the edge of Santarem, Catholic Priest Edilberto Sena is fighting for the forest. He's a founder of the Amazon Defense Front.

FATHER EDILBERTO SENNA, AMAZON DEFENSE FRONT: Soy is planted just to make profits, just to feed the first world, feed the cows, the chicken and the pigs. The profit grows and we stay with the destruction.

PENHAUL: Father Sena is also director of the church-funded radio station. He uses that as a pulpit to denounce corruption amongst local officials and, above all, to attack big business that he says is hacking down the forest.

FATHER SENA: It is a conflict of the capitalism and the other way of thinking about life. So when people -- the capitalist has no soul. Capitalism has no ethnics, has only interests. So they come and they come and they come, destroying everywhere in order to make profit.

PENHAUL: He and some environmental groups, including Greenpeace, blame U.S. grain multinational Cargill for encouraging the spread of soybean plantations around Santarem.

Cargill built a grain port here in 2001. Environmentalists say it's a magnet for soy farmers moving northwards into the Amazon from more traditional soy growing regions.

Delicio Pereira's 495 hectare soy farm is an hour's drive from Santarem. He came to the Amazon three years ago.

"I was a farmer in Mato Grosso and transport and freight costs were very expensive, so I moved here and cut the costs, because we can export from the nearby port," he says.

He says he and two brother cut down along an abandoned rubber plantation but denies clearing virgin rainforest.

"If they produce soy in the south, why can't we do the same here in the Amazon rainforest? I think there should be a demarcated area so we can work in peace rather than being branded criminals," he says.

Cargill agrees. A May 2006 statement reads, "Greenpeace wants to prohibit commercial agriculture in the Amazon biome. We do not believe it's necessary to take such extreme measures. The Amazon is one of the poorest regions of Brazil and the world and there's a recognized need for responsible economic and social development."

The company recruited a U.S. conservation group, the Nature Conservancy, to help clean up the image of the soy industry. Economist Benito Guerrero says he wants Brazilian authorities to enforce frequently flouted environmental laws. But neither Cargill nor Nature Conservancy oppose the principle of large-scale commercial farming in the Amazon.

BENITO GUERRERO, AGRONOMIST: There are some areas already cleared, which are not primary forest, that could be used for these economical activities. But at the same rate -- at the same time -- we want, by working with them, to promote conservation using the legal basis that the Brazilian government defines as possible.

PENHAUL: Cargill is imposing a two-year ban on buying soybeans from farmers who illegally clear land after July 2006. No such restrictions apply to areas that were cleared illegally prior to that date. Not good enough, opponents say.

FATHER SENA: We need the moratorium forever. No monoculture in our region. We have to respect the ecosystem of the forest.

PENHAUL: From the 1970s on, Brazil's rulers began driving highways into the Amazon. Since then, an area of forest bigger than France has been lost, around 17 percent of Brazil's entire Amazon jungle.

The first wave of settlers were people like peasant farmer Jose Fejeira, who came from impoverished regions looking to make their fortunes. In their wake, loggers, cattle ranchers and, most recently, soy farmers, arrived, all promising progress, all speeding up the destruction of the rainforest.

"They fed us propaganda that soybeans would bring money, investment and progress. But in reality, it brought deforestation and problems. Land grabbing, forest clearing and crop diseases increased," he says.

When wealthy soy farmers arrived, land prices rocketed from around $25 a hectare to $1,000. Many dirt poor peasant farmers simply sold out.

"All this area was once forest, but those who lived here knocked it down and then the soybean farmers came and bought it off the others," he says.

Joao Cameiro da Souza has lived here for 40 years and says the advent of soy farming has devastated his small herd of cattle. He says public health officials have so far failed to check out his claims. He says 80 of his cows have died in the last four years after drinking runoff water laced with pesticides and fertilizer sprayed on neighboring soy fields.

"People and animals can't stand here because the soy farmers use pesticides and if it lands on you, then you feel sick," he says.

As he stands at his fence line, he wonders how long the rest of his herd will survive and how much longer there will be an Amazon rainforest.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Santarem, Brazil.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now. When we come back, more of the Amazon priest's plea.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: This is how one part of the Amazon looks from a NASA satellite in space. The Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in 2002. The rainforest is green, the deforested land is beige. By 2006, the deforestation had spread dramatically. It's not that easy to spot all the newly cleared land, but NASA created a different image to highlight the change. See the red? Those are forest areas that were cut down, the result of just four years of deforestation.

Welcome back.

The Brazilian government actually says that for two years in a row, deforestation rates in the Amazon have gone down, but there is a stretch of land that's about the size of Mexico that still goes unprotected in Brazil. It's called the Soroto, and it's home to thousands of plants, birds and animals. Soybean farmers have been clearing that land at alarming rates.

Activists are pushing for it to be regulated as well.

We hear now from one of the rainforest's most ardent. He is Father Edilberto Sena, who you'll recall from Karl Penhaul's report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FATHER SENA: After 2000, we -- our people here didn't know what is soy. But from 2000 on, when the problem of the cow's illness in England, in Europe, started, then soy became a commodity very important in the world. Cargill is the one responsible for the people coming here to open land, to buy land, and to invade the land of the state in order to plant soy.

There is no stimulation for the small farmers to grow. At the same time, come these people from outside and they have money, easy money, to buy the land and to buy equipment, and to produce in tons. Two million tons of soy was transported through here.

But when we see -- we you see the city, the bad roads, when you see the hospital with big lines because there is no good assistance, so who is taking the profit? Cargill in Minnesota? The soy people from Mato Grosso? But the people from the area here, we continue to be poor, unemployed.

There is no soy industry here. It is only planting, collecting and shipping, just transporting, just going to the pigs, to the cows and to the chickens of England, Holland, Germany, France and China. So we only live with the holes in the forest.

It is a conflict of the capitalism and the other way of thinking about life. So when people -- the capitalist has no soul. Capitalism has no ethnics, has only interests. So they come and they come and they come, destroying everywhere in order to make profit. Minerals, lumber, timber and now agriculture.

Then the small people start thinking, learning that we have rights, we have to protect them. So then the organization comes, they have a shop, and unfortunately the state is either weak or protecting the big capitalism. So they close their eyes, then the conflict comes. And who gets killed? The poor. The nun, the priest, the laypeople, the leaders of the unions. So in our state, more than 1,000 were killed in the last 20 years because of conflict of land, of capitalism.

We need the moratorium forever. No monoculture in our region. We have to respect the ecosystem of the forest.

We cannot save Amazon and we cannot save any place in the world if we agree that market is God or, better saying, that God is market. It means their own rules, we cannot stop market. If we have this philosophy, we are lost.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Edilberto Sena, a very unusual priest.

Well, among all the plants and animals in the Amazon, there is now an unusual hybrid. Karl Penhaul mentioned it just in passing. One of the world's largest agricultural conglomerates, a name you've heard over and over in this program, Cargill, has teamed up with an environmental activist organization, the Nature Conservancy, to address abuses in the soybean economy.

Joining us now to talk about that is David Cleary, director of conservation programs in South America for the Nature Conservancy, joining us now on the line.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Let me ask you first of all, is it fair to say both Cargill and the Nature Conservancy see a direct link between soybean farming and deforestation?

DAVID CLEARY, NATURE CONSERVANCY: I think there is some link between soy farming and deforestation. I think most people who are familiar with the Amazon would say that ranching is a much more important cause of deforestation than grain farming.

But there have been, certainly, in Mato Gross, there's been shown to be a reasonably strong link between deforestation and soy farming.

MANN: You are trying, your organization is trying to limit it with a kind of 1/5-4/5 program. Farmers who own land are encouraged and allowed to use 1/5 of it for soybean farming while reserving 4/5 of it as rainforest. Have I got that right? And more importantly, is it working? Is it working in a significant way?

CLEARY: The Brazilian forest code is quite specific about the legal obligations of agricultural producers, and in the Amazon, they're obliged to maintain 80 percent of their land holding in native vegetation or native forest, if you like.

If they don't have that 80 percent, then they're meant to acquire areas that will bring them up to that 80 percent threshold. So the work that we're doing with Cargill and the general message we spread to other countries, is that they need to be compliant with Brazilian environmental legislation. It would not be acceptable in the United States to be buying soy from producers who were not compliant with U.S. environmental legislation.

MANN: I'm going to interrupt you, though, because the legal obligation is one thing. There are vast areas of the Amazon that are lawless. How are you doing? Is it really working?

CLEARY: It's precisely because of the lawlessness of the Amazon that we find ourselves talking to companies like Cargill. You know, the Amazon is increasingly being pulled into world markets, and the fact of the matter is, is that if you're having goods produced for export to places like Europe, where consumers are worried about the environmental implications of what they're consuming, and if you have to present the presence of companies, like Cargill, who are actually rather sensitive to problem for their image that events in the Amazon can cause, then you have new pressure points that environmental groups like ourselves can take advantage of. And I think, you know, we can work with the companies to try and encourage them to only source from producers who are compliant with the actually rather good Brazilian environmental legislation.

MANN: And yet, forgive me for interrupting, Cargill is saying that it is refusing to buy soybeans off land that was illegally cleared before July 2006. Essentially what they're saying is.

CLEARY: Yes, that's a moratorium on further cultivation, which is something we've been trying to get Cargill to agree to for a number of years.

MANN: That's forward looking, and probably important, but isn't it essentially allowing anyone who has already broken the law, anyone who has already violated the environment, to get rich? And saying that we will not allow anyone else to do this perhaps for the next two years, but everyone who has already done it, we'll buy plenty of soybeans if you can grow them.

CLEARY: I think that there's a great deal -- in the Amazon, there is a large number of land that's already been cleared a long time ago. There's plenty of opportunity for grain producers to grow grain on land that was cleared, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago.

If we could channel whatever expansion there is of grain production, and you know, we're talking soy now. A couple of years down the road, we're going to be talking about corn and about sugarcane as the biofuel sector takes off. If we can channel this development into areas that have already been cleared and if we can also use it as a lever to actually force producers and buyers to fulfill their obligations under the forest code, then we think that will be an excellent way of protecting the forest and ensuring that deforestation doesn't take place linked to the expansion of agriculture.

MANN: David Cleary, of the Nature Conservancy, thanks so much for talking with us.

CLEARY: My pleasure.

MANN: We take another break. When we come back, we look beyond Brazil.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Is cutting a tree like driving a car? Most of us know by now that fossil fuels generate carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet. Living trees absorb carbon dioxide. Cutting them down releases some of it and diminishes the number of trees that are available to keep even more of it out of our air. Some people believe that world deforestation may be generating an amount of carbon dioxide comparable to every car and factory in the United States of America.

Welcome back.

Wood is about 50 percent carbon. A hectare of tropical forest stores more than 400 metric tons of the stuff. Cut the trees down, and the carbon joins with oxygen and turns into CO2.

Joining us now to talk about soybeans, forests and fouled air is Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute.

Thanks so much for being with us.

All through this program we have been beating up on the soybean. Would the world be a better place if we stopped eating them or using them?

LESTER BROWN, EARTH POLICY INSTITUTE: Most of us don't even know when we're eating soybeans because we consume them indirectly. It has become standard practice now throughout the world to mix soybean meal with grain, corn or wheat or whatever else is being fed to pigs and chickens and cows and so forth. And now the standard sort of rule of thumb is about 20 percent soybean meal with 80 percent grain for almost all feeding operations. This is true in Brazil, it's true in China, it's true in the United States, and this is what's created the enormous demand for soybeans as world consumption of livestock products, meat, milk, eggs, cheese, pork, poultry, the entire package of lifestyle products, all of the things that we see in our refrigerator, are produced in part with soybeans in the form of soybean meal.

MANN: Now, it's not just us, after all. Part of this is the result of the fact that the people of China are eating more protein. Part of this is a result of the fact that people are more careful about what they feed their cattle in Europe because of the Mad Cow scare. Part of this is, I suppose you could say, the cloud that's following a silver lining.

BROWN: The Mad Cow Disease problem has been associated with recycling animal protein from slaughterhouse waste. It was simply ground up and fed to cattle. And that has been banned. So that has expanded the demand for soybean meal.

And then you have China, and many other countries in East Asia and elsewhere, where incomes are rising rapidly and with those rises in incomes, as people are moving up the food chain, consuming more and more pork and poultry, eggs, milk, beef, and that all takes soybean meal.

So we've seen an enormous market develop for soybean meal over the last half century. Indeed, since 1950, the world's soybean harvest has increased 13-fold, and whereas a half century ago most of the soybeans in the world were grown in China. And then the United States overtook China, and today the United States produces five-times as many soybeans as China, which, incidentally, is where the soybean originated, and in the United States, for example, we have now more land in soybeans than we do in wheat.

MANN: And Brazil, forgive me for interrupting, is set to surpass the United States very soon. So where does that leave the Amazon? Where does that leave the forest?

BROWN: It puts a lot of pressure on the Amazon because the United States cannot expand its cropland area much beyond the current area. And so additional growth in the world demand for livestock, livestock products and, therefore, soybean meal, will have to be satisfied substantially by Brazil if it is to be satisfied.

MANN: We have just a moment. There is enormous, enormous market pressure. There is the very weak force of law in the Amazon. Which will prevail? Are you reassured by what we've heard from the Nature Conservancy? Are you reassured by what the government of Brazil says?

BROWN: No, not very much. I think what we're seeing is the progressive weakening of the rainforest.

What happens, even if you only permit 1/5 of the land cleared to be -- I'm sorry, of the land in the Amazon to be used for soybeans, for example, that still weakens the rainforest, and after a while, the forest begins to burn spontaneously.

When we had a healthy rainforest in the Amazon a half century ago, it was very difficult to get anything to burn there because it was so wet. Once you start clearing some of it, then the forest starts drying out and it becomes very vulnerable to fire and even thunderstorms can start fires. And this is one reason why we see from satellite photographs now so many fires burning during the dry season in the Amazon.

And the risk is that this weakening and the increased vulnerability of the burning, combined with the reduced recycling of rainfall inland, because that's what the rainforest does when it's healthy, could lead us past a tipping point and the Amazon could begin to go, the Amazon rainforest could begin to go and we would not be able to save it. If that were to happen, it would alter -- it would release an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere and it would affect the earth's climate.

MANN: Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, thank you so much for being with us.

BROWN: My pleasure.

MANN: And that's INSIGHT. I'm Jonathan Mann.

END

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