Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 09
1 So, there is no doubt at all, and indeed this myth still
2 seems to prevail amongst many of the producers in the
3 Amazon, they if they only get the production right, they
4 only get the techniques right, if they only sort out a few
5 technical problems, then the Amazon will once more become
6 that bread basket which were talking about.
7
8 Q. Does that include cattle ranching?
9 A. Yes, absolutely, it includes cattle ranching which of
10 course has been the major thrust of agricultural activity
11 in the Brazilian Amazon and in the Brazilian forest
12 altogether. Thus, there is this very strong impression,
13 which is still an abiding one, I feel, that they are going
14 to be doing the world a favour and exporting vast
15 quantities of food and, as techniques improve, the
16 prospects of that improve slightly but nowhere near the
17 ideal, the dreams which were entertained by those pioneers
18 and, to some extent, still are.
19
20 Q. Do you know what timescale that pioneering of cattle
21 ranching in the Amazon spans?
22 A. Well, it has been a long established business to try
23 to get in there. The first real thrust was in the 1950s
24 but it was fairly small scale. It began to build up in the
25 1960s and 1970s, especially with the opening of the
26 Trans-Amazon Highway in the 1970s, and, furthermore, in the
27 1980s up through the western side of the Amazon and, of
28 course, this expansion, this pioneering effort, is
29 continuing still to this day.
30
31 Q. I will continue to read:
32
33 "D: Markets: Beef cattle in Brazil are generally produced
34 for the domestic market. They may be transported long
35 distances by road. While some are slaughtered and consumed
36 by small, local outlets, some of the Amazon's cattle are
37 trucked down to the large urban centres, such as Sao Paulo
38 and Rio de Janeiro. The meat is consumed both fresh and in
39 processed forms, and sold by outlets ranging from local
40 butchers to fast-food chains."
41
42 Just on the "trucked down to the large urban centres", how
43 do you know this?
44 A. I have seen cattle trucks with live cattle on their
45 way down and when you are in the frontier towns of the
46 Amazon you mix a lot with truck drivers, and all that, and
47 you catch up on all the news.
48
49 Q. Continuing to read:
50
51 "E. Productivity: Cattle ranching on cleared rainforest
52 land in the Brazilian Amazon is generally an extremely
53 unproductive use of the land. Cows can typically be
54 stocked only at densities of less than one per hectare,
55 which compares poorly with most other regions of the
56 world. Calculations by the biologist Dr Christopher Uhl,
57 whose projects I have visited, suggest that annual beef
58 production in the state of Para in the eastern Amazon can
59 supply only 6.5% of the yearly income that could be raised
60 from manioc production on the same land, or 10% of the
