[Marxism] Brazil, China, soybeans and ecology

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The New York Times, September 17, 2003
Relentless Foe of the Amazon Jungle: Soybeans
By LARRY ROHTER

It takes only a trip on the busy but rutted 
highway that leads north from here to understand 
how an area of the Amazon jungle larger than New 
Jersey could have been razed over the course of just a year.

Where the jungle once offered shelter to parrots 
and deer, the land is now increasingly being 
cleared for soybeans, Brazil's hottest cash crop.

Soy cultivation is booming, driven by a 
coincidence of global demand from as far off as 
China and the local politics of state where the 
new governor was known as the Soybean King even 
before his election last October.

Today soybeans are eating up larger and larger 
chunks of the Amazon, leading to a 40 percent 
jump in deforestation last year, to nearly 10,000 
square miles. Even the pastures where cows grazed 
until recently are being converted, pushing a 
cattle herd that has become the world's largest 
even deeper into the agricultural frontier.

"The new factor in the equation of Amazon 
deforestation is clearly soybeans and the appeal 
they hold for agribusiness," Stephan 
Schwartzmann, director of the Washington-based 
group Environmental Defense, said after a visit to the region in July.

A dry season that was unusually parched also 
appears to have figured in the surge in 
deforestation from August 2001 to July 2002, 
according to the country's National Institute for 
Space Research. So did a certain laxness in law 
enforcement, traditional during an election year, 
and a weak currency that made farming for export 
especially attractive, analysts have suggested.

But experts are unanimous in warning that as 
soybean farming continues to spread through the 
adjacent southern Amazon states of Mato Grosso 
and Para, the threat to the Amazon ecological 
system is likely to worsen in the next few years.

Environmental groups had hoped that Brazil's 
left-wing president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 
would take steps to combat deforestation. But Mr. 
da Silva has instead emphasized increasing 
agricultural production to swell exports and feed 
the urban poor, a position that has earned him criticism even from allies.

"The Amazon is not untouchable," Mr. da Silva 
said during a visit to the region in July. That 
view is strongly supported by Blairo Maggi, the 
new governor here in the state of Mato Grosso, 
who has repeatedly dismissed any concerns about deforestation.

(clip)

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NY Times, April 6, 2007
To Fortify China, Soybean Harvest Grows in Brazil
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RONDONÓPOLIS, Brazil ? For more than 2,000 years, 
the Chinese have turned soybeans into tofu, a staple of the country?s diet.

But as its economy grows, so does China?s 
appetite for pork, poultry and beef, which 
require higher volumes of soybeans as animal 
feed. Plagued by scarce water supplies, China is 
turning to a new trading partner 15,000 miles 
away ? Brazil ? to supply more protein-packed beans essential to a richer diet.

China?s global scramble for natural resources is 
leading to a transformation of agricultural 
trading around the world. In China, vanishing 
cropland and diminishing water supplies are 
hampering the country?s ability to feed itself, 
and the increasing use of farmland in the United 
States to produce biofuels is pushing China to 
seek more of its staples from South America, 
where land is still cheap and plentiful.

?China is out there beating the bushes,? said 
Robert L. Thompson, a professor at the University 
of Illinois who is a former director of 
agricultural and rural development at the World 
Bank. The goal, he said, is ?to ensure they have 
access to long-term contracts for minerals and energy and food.?

Once, the biggest bilateral food trade flowed 
between the United States, the world?s largest 
food exporter, and Japan. But countries with vast 
arable land available for expansion, particularly 
Brazil, are now racing to meet demand in China, 
whose population of 1.3 billion is 10 times that of Japan?s.

Farmers in the United States have started 
planting far more corn for ethanol at the expense 
of other crops, including soybeans. But after the 
United States grain embargo by President Richard 
M. Nixon in the early 1970s helped spawn Brazil?s 
soybean industry, American farmers are not giving 
up their leading role in the grain trade easily.

With a far superior system for transporting crops 
to global markets, American farmers still enjoy 
many advantages over their new competitors from 
Brazil and elsewhere in the developing world. 
Infrastructure and financing constraints in 
Brazil will keep the competition to feed China in flux for years to come.

But the longer-term trends are apparent. At the 
heart of the shift is the global competition for 
land to grow crops. Brazil, which farms about 175 
million acres, has room to double its available 
cropland to equal the scale of the United States, 
analysts say, even without clearing any more of the Amazon rainforest.

?All of a sudden you have a global market for 
land, a competition between several different 
products for the same amount of land,? said 
Sergio Barroso, president for the Brazil 
operations of Cargill, the biggest grain trader 
in the world. Brazil?s soybean industry is losing 
acres to sugar cane for ethanol production in 
some areas, he said, and is competing with corn, cotton and cattle.

?If you put it all together between feed and 
food,? Mr. Barroso said, ?it is going to be a tremendous challenge.?

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/business/worldbusiness/06soy.html

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