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Agricultural expansion main factor of Brazil's deforestation and it's expanding

Monday, October 5th 2015 - 23:20 UTC
Full article 2 comments
 The study by IBGE, says the destruction of Amazon jungles and the savannahs of central Brazil went faster between 2010/12 that in the previous 10 years. The study by IBGE, says the destruction of Amazon jungles and the savannahs of central Brazil went faster between 2010/12 that in the previous 10 years.
About 7.8% of native vegetation, which amounts to some 159,670 sq. kilometers, was lost to agriculture and livestock between 2010 and 2012 . About 7.8% of native vegetation, which amounts to some 159,670 sq. kilometers, was lost to agriculture and livestock between 2010 and 2012 .

Agricultural expansion is the chief contributing factor to the deforestation of Brazilian ecosystems and has accelerated in recent years, according to an official study released last week.

 The study, prepared by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, says the destruction of Amazon jungles and the savannahs of central Brazil went faster between 2010 and 2012 that in the previous 10 years.

While between 2000 and 2010 destructive changes were inflicted on some 7% of Brazilian territory, in the two-year period between 2010-2012 the process was speeded up and about 3.5% of the country's natural vegetation was destroyed.

One of the contributors to the study, Eloisa Domingues, says that the areas whose vegetation suffered the greatest changes were precisely those “where there was an expansion of agriculture.”

The ecosystems that were hardest hit in recent years were the semi-arid zones of northeastern Brazil known as “caatinga,” the savannahs of the central region of the country and the southern pampas.

Those areas, where most of the crops and livestock are produced, lost about 7.8% of their native vegetation between 2010-2012, which amounts to some 159,670 sq. kilometers.

During the same period, the combined area of rain forest in the Amazon region and on the Atlantic coast was reduced by 1.8%, or close to 59,230 sq. kilometers, according to the study.

Some 68% of the deforested areas in the Amazon and Atlantic rain forests were turned into croplands, 28% into pastures and 4% were dedicated to forestry.

Brazil is one of the world's great agricultural and livestock producers, the leading producer of beef and the chief exporter of soy, oranges, coffee, sugar and poultry meat.

Top Comments

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  • Brasileiro

    And it's for half the territory stay a virgin forever? We make sacrifices to keep the forest and its inhabitants living in prehistory, then a Saxon comes and calls us of third world!
    If we evolve to the second world, we will explore the forest and all its inhabitants bring the twenty-first century.

    Anyone who wants the forest to pay a lot for it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WiZhAmWXe0

    Oct 06th, 2015 - 10:52 am 0
  • Jack Bauer

    @1 brasshole
    You believe that the Amazon rain forest does not need protecting - which it does, for obvious reasons - then chop it down, burn the wood or sell it illegally, and when all the rivers up north get silted up or dry up, the land becomes a desert - good for nothing - all the remaining north easterners can migrate to the south, live in ever larger slums where everyone will be happy, living in shit. Good call brasshole !
    Brazil has to learn how to explore the forest in a sustainable manner, not simply destroy it. And since you are a socialist idiot, who d'you think is profiting from the destruction of the forest ?? Certainly not the 'people'..

    Oct 07th, 2015 - 04:56 pm 0
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