[tracker1]

How much money is made from the farmland from deforested regions... how much from the lumber and how much from the reuse of the land? How many countries are trading with Brazil for consuming those goods?

It's a big problem, but without some input from trade partners globally and/or other support, I'm not sure what the solution really is. Also, not just in Brazil, but other areas with grasslands that have seen desertification, countering that is very important. It may be necessary to support global efforts to increase diverse planting to portions of agricultural lands to at least try to preserve them. Grazing and crop rotations as well.

Efforts for more diverse use of agriculture as well. More barley and buckwheat, less soy and corn. Less monoculture in the crops, seed varieties of crops we already grow to increase diversity in agriculture. Of course, moving away from Monsonto controlled models, which should mean reverting policy on patents regarding genetic markers and traits.

Right now, too much of the food supply is from mega farms with no diversity and lots of chemical pesticides and resistant strains of crops that are killing off bee populations. I'm not so much against GMO crops as a practice, but definitely need some genetic diversity in the practice. We have the ability to feed the world, we need to start concentrating on doing it better.

[heduduhdjjd]

The only real solution will be for wealthy nations paying Brazil to not exploit their natural resources, which seems like a very very high ask for all parties involved.

Otherwise we'll see the continued destruction for at least another 30-40 years until there's a global demographic peak.

We're also going to see the destruction of the Canadian Boreal forest as temperatures rise makes such land viable for industrial farming.

[bgorman]

You can donate to charities that directly purchase rainforest. Rainforesttrust.org is one. They can purchase an acre of land for around 10 dollars.

Right now the main issue is that last year they only received 15 million in donations. Not nearly enough to stop the problem.

[mikepurvis]

Having looked into it only briefly, how are these "owned" acres policed?

[hedora]

The article says that people are illegally clearing land they don’t own.

[eloff]

No, the Canadian forest would basically reclaim as much land from the tundra where it's currently to cold for trees as it would lose to agriculture. I expect it to be more or less a wash. Also the same goes for Russia's boreal forests.

[yonaguska]

why not just sanction or tariff beef exports? Seems like a simpler solution.

[blablabla123]

I wonder if there are any NGOs one could reasonably give money for that.

Most countries just don't have a rainforest although it's in interest of most to maintain the existing ones.

[switchbak]

Canada (and the Boreal in particular)is absolutely huge. I'm not convinced that much of this land is any more economically viable than the copious amounts of "undeveloped" wilderness to the south.

Plus, climate change is also about variability. Much of this land could see wild extremes of weather, sounds risky for agriculture.

[terlisimo]

"The planet is fine."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgJKrmbYfg

[hanwenn]

The money is not made on the lumber, but on agriculture.

I recently read that, most of the deforested regions are used for low-density cattle (0.5 cow / hectare), which gets transformed into beef, mainly for export.

[rodolphoarruda]

As a Brazilian, I'm trying to imagine the logistical costs of running any type of large scale export oriented agriculture business in the Amazon. There is no railroad, no paved roads, no electricity, no workforce (human density is lower than 1 per square Km, let alone work aged humans), nothing. There's a lot of dense forest and water. Feeding cattle in large scale must be a huge expensive challenge in the Amazon region. Processing meat and moving it to ports, an insanely expensive work due to the lack of basic infrastructure. On the flip side, there are other regions in the country with at least 3 decades of accumulated expertise in animal protein production for the international market, good infrastructure, including proximity to sea ports. I don't see how a serious globally competitive animal protein group could make the decision to run business in such an isolated infra deprived area. It would be like someone from the Silicon Valley deciding to run a tech business in Antarctica for the sole reason the datacenter could be kept cooler at a lower cost using what nature has to offer in abundance in that region: cold weather. Amazon offers cheap land and water (period), but that is not enough to make a profitable animal protein business.

[acqq]

You don't have to "imagine" there are the pictures from the satellites which can be compared with the older:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HusBCLws0Q

https://youtu.be/L9zWDtDKDS8?t=45

[rodolphoarruda]

Interesting. Do you have videos showing cattle, warehouses, trucks etc.? With so much devastation, it must be easy to land helicopters anywhere out there and film the whole thing from close distance.

[acqq]

> Do you have videos showing cattle, warehouses, trucks etc.?

No. And I surely agree with you that the explanations are probably broad generalizations. I have no idea how those that do it earn money in any specific case, but deforestation is really happening across the globe and definitely in Amazon forests too.

https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/amazon_deforesta...

Here is one description:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/Deforestat...

"This pattern follows one of the most common deforestation trajectories in the Amazon. Legal and illegal roads penetrate a remote part of the forest, and small farmers migrate to the area. They claim land along the road and clear some of it for crops. Within a few years, heavy rains and erosion deplete the soil, and crop yields fall. Farmers then convert the degraded land to cattle pasture, and clear more forest for crops. Eventually the small land holders, having cleared much of their land, sell it or abandon it to large cattle holders, who consolidate the plots into large areas of pasture."

As the name of the area depicted is stated in this case: "The state of Rondônia in western Brazil — once home to 208,000 square kilometers of forest (about 51.4 million acres), an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas — has become one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon" you can do your own research starting from there.

Also:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

"The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest, but in the last 40 years at least 20% of it has been destroyed. The Amazon basin covers nine countries in South America, with 60% of it in Brazil, and for a decade local photographer Rodrigo Baleia has documented the beauty and destruction of the region from above"

[tracker1]

Which is sad, because you don't need deep deforestation to introduce grassland for grazing. Also, I'm consistently curious why other grassland ruminants aren't more popularized, some of which imho taste better.

As to another comment on going vegan, it's just not an option for me... that doesn't mean I don't want more responsible means of farming.

[vitorbaptistaa]

This is the main reason I became a vegetarian.

[chewz]

> Less monoculture in the crops, seed varieties of crops we already grow to increase diversity in agriculture.

Less people on planet Earth consuming like there is no tommorow