Let’s start with the example of Cassio Carvalho do Val, a well-to-do rancher in Brazil. He plans to invest $2 million and add 10,000 more heads of cattle to his ranch on the edge of Amazon. The traditional approach would have called for felling of trees and increasing pastures for the cattle to graze. But Val hopes to increase his flock without burning down the Amazon by adding grain to their feed.
He is among the few who are trying out integrated farming by diversifying production and revenue. It’s a radical departure in a country that took to the jungle with machetes and hacksaws. It may also bring back a flicker of hope for the wondrous Amazon rain forests.
Along with ranchers who are planting corn to supplement their herd’s traditional diet of grasses, you now have soy growers who are rotating fields with more corn and cotton, planting forest and raising cattle. These moves will not only ease the pressure on forested land, but also increase output of a diversity of crops.
Integrated farming, unlike in the United States and Europe, is a new concept for Brazil. So, there are concerns and teething problems to be expected. For instance, Val says,” I lose 80 calves a year to jaguars.”
There’s no denying that inspite of the problems, he is forward thinking in his approach. A Sao Paulo University-educated sociologist, he has hired consultants to help develop a whole new set of skills in grain farming. Val plans to invest 3 million reais ($1.8 million) to plant corn on 9 square miles of his 88 square miles of pasture. The remaining 94 square miles of his ranch must remain forested reserve in this part of the Amazon.
But as his statement shows, he still harbors a sliver of old-world thoughts where the bush was considered to be dark, foreboding, and an enemy. Let’s also remember that Brazil, with all its social inequalities, started off with homesteading until the last decade to populate and secure its vast, United States-sized interior. The rough and tumble lifestyle of the old is still in the genes of many farmers who look to the jungle as a means of increasing their holdings. These expansionist policies supported by the Brazilian government eventually brought environmental and trade pressure to a head in the last decade.
Issues still remain, but as the beginning shows, there’s finally an alternative to burning down the Amazon.
