Amazonian Rainforest Essay

Human population has been steadily rising since the Industrial Revolution; the United Nations estimated that there were over 7.3 billion people in the world in 2015 and predicted that the population will rise to a potential maximum of 16.6 billion by 2100 (United Nations). Such an increase in population results in a similar rise in the demand for food. In order to avoid a potentially catastrophic famine, food production needs to increase in order to feed all of the new mouths without placing excessive financial burdens on families, and with the current shortage of available arable land, the Amazonian Rainforest is a tempting place to turn into agricultural lots. Although expanding agriculture into Amazonia appears to benefit the people by
Ranching operations cannot be initiated on forested land, and ranchers must transform the rainforest into grassland in order to commence operations. Deforesting the Amazon produces timber as a byproduct. Margulis calculated the value of the timber to be USD $203 per hectare of rainforest (57). For loggers, ranchers, and other agri-businessmen, they may see no more value in the rainforest than the USD $203/ha. that can be profited from the wood. However, Ioulia Fenton, the leader of the food and agricultural research stream at the Institute of Advanced Developmental Studies in Bolivia, would see their evaluation as incredibly short-sighted. She informs that, when harvested sustainably, the rainforest offers an infinite supply of “fresh water; wild foods; crops and livestock; wild fisheries; wood for fire and construction; fibers and other materials for arts and crafts; and natural biomedicines and pharmaceuticals” (Fenton). For the local and indigenous populations who reside in Amazonia, the rainforest is their lifeline; it keeps their hunger satiated, their bodies healthy, their houses standing, and their cultures intact. To deprive them of their rainforest is to deprive them of their way of life. Throughout post-Columbian history in the New World, non-natives have often committed such
Between 1970 and 1995, the number of Amazonian residents earning less than the national average income fell from 100 percent to 80 percent, indicating “a not insignificant improvement in income levels” (Margulis 68). The logic of job creation makes sense; after all, someone must raise, tend, and slaughter all of the 200 million cows in the region, and the people who maintain the pastures receive money as compensation, which they can spend on food for their families. Unfortunately, the ranching industry simply doesn’t create enough jobs to feed everyone. According to Sergio Margulis, ranches typically create “an average of only 36 jobs per project” (49). In addition, cattle ranching is a low yield, low density operation (“Cattle Ranching”), meaning that ranchers produce only a small amount of agricultural output per unit area of arable land. According to the principle of economies of scale, such low density operations are too expensive to run if they are too small in size; therefore, economics forces the typical ranch to be large. This economic principle is visible in the real world: the average Amazonian ranch spans “several hundreds of hectares,” and “many ranches [reach] thousands of hectares” (“Cattle Ranching”). If a typical ranch contains hundreds of hectares of land