EATING UP THE AMAZON 1

EATING UP
THE AMAZON
11
‘A smoky haze blurs the frontier between the world’s
mightiest forest and its biggest threat: the humble soya
bean. The four-month burning season in the Amazon is
when the giant trees felled to make space for crops are
reduced to ashes. Even after being slashed and burned, the
trunks of the tauari and maçaranduba are so huge that their
embers glow for more than two years… Brazil’s boom crop
and [the world’s] growing appetite are clearing more forest
than logging, cattle farming and mining… Brazil is rapidly
becoming the takeaway for the workforce of the world.’
The Guardian ‘A hunger eating up the world’, 18 January 2005 21