Comments on: What Should We Do About Beef From The Amazon?

By: Robert Lalasz

Robert Lalasz — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:18:34 +0000

Hi, Ian:

Check out this link from Nature Conservancy magazine on our work with Cargill and Amazon soy production: http://www.nature.org/magazine/autumn2007/features/art21918.html

By: Ian Slattery

Ian Slattery — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:40:29 +0000

I know this somewhat off topic, but I can’t find anything on TNC’s website about its involvement with Cargill Inc. in an assessment project of rainforest deforestation by soybean farmers. Would be interested to hear TNC’s description of this relationship. I saw it mentioned in the below Bloomberg article:

“Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc., the largest privately held company in the U.S., spent $20 million to build a grain port on the Amazon River in 2003 that led to farmers illegally destroying thousands of hectares of rain forest to grow soybeans, says Felicio Pontes, a federal prosecutor who sued to block the project.

In early February, soybeans were piled high in a storage area at Cargill’s Amazon port, waiting to be loaded onto a ship bound for Europe. The company ships about 60,000 tons of soybeans a year grown near the town of Santarem. Before Cargill built the port, there was no large-scale soybean production in the area.

‘Completely Obvious’

Cargill hired The Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit group, to confirm that soybean farmers aren’t clearing the Amazon around Santarem. The group says it has certified this year that 155 of 383 farms weren’t deforesting.

“It’s completely obvious that Cargill’s port gave an incentive that led to deforestation,” Pontes says”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=aEmubrLsu.ro

By: TLSmith

TLSmith — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:52:25 +0000

Hey Cleary,

I mention your great article on my blog. Check it out and feel free to comment, clarify or contradict.

TLSmith

By: Cease and desist or else « Conservation Station

Cease and desist or else « Conservation Station — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:41:15 +0000

[...] activities,” but I am thinking a more strategic approach is called for. Something like the insightful activities being carried on by the Nature Conservancy’s David Cleary with the cattle ranchers in Brazil [...]

By: Beef producers, the next cutting edge for rain forest conservation? | csmonitor.com

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:03:01 +0000

[...] In a Cool Green Science blog post titled “What should we do about beef from the Amazon?” he notes the problem: “Overwhelmingly the most important driver of deforestation in the Amazon is ranching, with pasture having replaced more than 80 percent of the Brazilian Amazon cleared since reliable satellite records began, in the early 1980s.” [...]

By: Friday Sustanability Report | The Chic Ecologist

Friday Sustanability Report | The Chic Ecologist — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:01:32 +0000

[...] Amazon Beef [...]

By: What Should We Do About Beef From The Amazon? « The Sugarcane Blog

What Should We Do About Beef From The Amazon? « The Sugarcane Blog — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:16:24 +0000

[...] on July 26, 2009 by sugarcaneblog The Nature Conservancy’s David Cleary wrote a fascinating article recently on the interplay of agriculture, cattle and rainforest conservation. It is worth a read as [...]

By: J.S.

J.S. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:32:45 +0000

carbon tax on food transport? because Iran is concerned? the point was made, this isn’t solely a US demand caused issue. Take the US out of the equation, China, Iran, Russia, they’ll all happily import the beef.
I enjoy being a carnivore, sourcing my meat locally whenever possible. Keep in mind that not all folks will be 100% on board with anything, so making modest moves moves the most. Continual modest moves will shift the way in which we behave as a global community. keep that in mind, a global community.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:34:40 +0000

The biggest enemy to sensible meat consumption are the fast fat outlets and their sly appeal to our salivary overdrive at the taste of burnt protein. How many cows is a billion hamburgers? How do we back a culture away from a heart attack precipice? Even the urban garden I’m barracking for
wants to hold a sausage sizzle to raise funds. Do we really need to kill a cow to grow a tomato?
The problem is that our fuel funded economics make meat too easily accessible. The beginning was refrigeration, and transport then took dead animals on trips most of the worlds population could not have made a hundred years earlier.
Has anyone done a graph paralleling meat consumption and fuel consumption? We need to push the health benefits of reducing food miles – by health I mean environmental as well. Lets put a carbon tax on food transport.
Such a tax would kill off cattle farms in the amazon.
Globalization of markets is a poisonously insidious idea. We now have the know how to move away from this insidious nonsense. If you must eat a cow make it local, and better still, go and kill it yourself. I think there are quite a few who won’t go there.

By: Silvia Dias

Silvia Dias — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:56:30 +0000

I live in Brazil – quite away from the Amazon forest, but close enough to the ag industry to know that there can be beef production w/out deforestation. WWF has just released a study about that which shows that productivity levels are really low here and there is plenty of land that has been damaged and that can be recovered for pasture. The point is that putting trees down provides the initial capital with which one can start a business. Embargo on wood from the forest would make deforestation quite less profitable – maybe less profitable enough to make the recovery of damaged lands an attractive option. Please do not buy wood from unknown sources – and maybe we will be able to reduce deforestation here in Brazil.