Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 15

     
     1        cities or to move to the rainforests.  The western
     2        Amazonian states of Rondonia and Acre are crowded with
     3        peasants driven out of southern Brazil (over 1.5 million
     4        arrived in the 1980s)  by agroindustrialists.  Many I
     5        interviewed told me that their land had been taken for soya
     6        production.  Once in the Amazon they are constrained to try
     7        to survive by clearing the forest and planting crops.  This
     8        has an enormous ecological impact:  small farmers are the
     9        most intractable of the causes of deforestation in
    10        Amazonia."
    11        A.   Does that statement require any explanation?  My point
    12        here is that while small farmers account, at the last
    13        count, for about 21 percent of deforestation, you cannot
    14        exactly stop that at the click of your fingers because they
    15        have to make their livelihood there once they are in the
    16        forest.  So you cannot just say: "We must stop having these
    17        small farmers here" as you could say, for instance, "We
    18        could stop this ranching", because it is not the case that
    19        people tend to depend on them for their livelihood on the
    20        ranching whereas the small farmers tend to depend on their
         livelihood on their clearings in the forest.  That is what
    22        I mean by that.
    23
    24   Q.  "All the significant soya production enterprise in Brazil
    25        use land that was once either forested or in the hands of
    26        peasant farmers:  there is, therefore, not likely to be any
    27        major soya farm in the country that has not had an
    28        important ecological impact.  Soya in Brazil is produced
    29        principally for export, for cattle feed in Europe and the
    30        United States.  Brazilian soya is an important ingredient
    31        in the diet of beef cattle throughout Britain and Europe:
    32        Brazil provides approximately one third of Europe's soya
    33        needs.  The principal exporters of Brazilian soya include
    34        Cargill USA, Continental Grain USA, Sunge USA, Dreyfuss
    35        France and Toepfer.
    36
    37        If, as I have been informed, it is true that cattle
    38        destined for McDonald's in Germany and elsewhere have been
    39        fed on soya beans emanating at certain times of the year,
    40        from Brazil, then McDonald's is an inextricable part of the
         chain that leads to deforestation in Brazil.  McDonald's
    42        successful promotion of the hamburger as a desirable and
    43        culturally significant food worldwide has lead to increased
    44        demand for beef in many countries and, as a result, an
    45        increased demand for Brazilian soya.  This has helped soya
    46        to become one of Brazil's most profitable growth industries
    47        in the 1990s and, therefore, helped generate the intense
    48        pressure for the expansion of soya fields.  In these
    49        different ways, therefore, it is my opinion that McDonald's
    50        is partly responsible for forest clearance, displacement of 
    51        peasants and the continued cultivation of land which might 
    52        have reverted to rainforest. 
    53
    54        1st November, 1993".
    55
    56        Do you stand by that statement?
    57        A.   Yes, I do.
    58
    59   MR. JUSTICE BELL:   If you want to sit down at any stage, Mr.
    60        Monbiot, just pull the chair forward so that you are still