Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 14

     
     1        What is interesting is that even within what is meant to be
     2        the very nub of what you would imagine would be a dense wet
     3        canopy forest in the Amazon, you get what could be called
     4        very xerophytic vegetation and this means vegetation which
     5        is adapted to extremely dry land, even though in this case
     6        it is very wet.  The reason for this is that the soils
     7        there are particularly well drained in some parts of the
     8        Amazon, almost pure white sand, and so you get succulents
     9        and cactus like plants living right in the middle of the
    10        Amazon basin and yet those, in the poplar perception, still
    11        fit into the category of rainforest.  What I am trying to
    12        say is that it is not a technical botanical term at all but
    13        a term which most people would understand and recognise.
    14
    15   Q.   We will come to the map a bit later anyway.  If I read the
    16        next statement, which is the addendum, regarding soya
    17        production in Brazil.  Do you stand by that previous
    18        statement?
    19        A.   Yes.
    20
    Q.   This one is this in November 1993:
    22
    23        "Soya production is one of the significant causes of
    24        deforestation in Brazil, with both direct and indirect
    25        impacts on the forests there.
    26
    27        Directly, significant areas of forest are cleared each year
    28        for soya fields.  In the south of Brazil, from the late
    29        1960s to the early 1980s, the states of Rio Grande do Sul,
    30        Santa Catarina and Parana lost the last of their forests to
    31        soya production.  These forests were of great importance,
    32        both in terms of their biodiversity (many of the species
    33        here were found nowhere else) and in terms of their
    34        stabilisation of soils, hydrological cycles and local
    35        climate.  Today the soya frontier is continuing to expand
    36        on the southern fringes of Amazonia, especially in the
    37        State of Mato Grosso.  Here the cerrado forest has suffered
    38        such severe losses that when a recent ecological project
    39        sought to find its centres of biodiversity, the researchers
    40        discovered that none persisted.  Some less significant
         intrusions have been made by both soya farmers and settlers
    42        following them along the frontier into the bordering closed
    43        canopy Forests."
    44        A.   That is correct, yes.
    45
    46   Q.   Continuing to read:
    47
    48        "Indirectly, soya plantations have displaced enormous
    49        numbers of peasant farmers.  The soya farmers have expelled
    50        the peasants by a number of means: Gunmen have been sent 
    51        into their villages to drive them away; their houses have 
    52        been burnt down; titles to their land have been obtained by 
    53        fraudulent means; the agroindustrialists have monopolised
    54        supplies of agricultural credits and funds for
    55        infracstructural development.  The land of the peasants is
    56        ploughed for soya production, destroying the diversity of
    57        microhabitats they protected and replacing them with
    58        uniform fields.
    59
    60        The peasants are left with two options: To move to the