SIR - Your briefing paints a cheery picture of the potential for Brazil to meet the world’s growing food needs (“The miracle of the cerrado”, The economist August 28th 2010). However, two important facts should temper our optimism about this remarkable agricultural story.
First, Brazilian climate change law requires steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020: 36-39% below 2005 levels. The government plans to achieve this through an 80% reduction in deforestation in the Amazon region and a 40% reduction in deforestation of the cerrado savannah. It is on track to reach the Amazon goal, but will only succeed in curbing the 7,000-20,000 plus square kilometres of annual clearing in the cerrado if most agricultural expansion moves onto unproductive cattle pastures. An even greater challenge for Brazil and a world facing a dangerous climatic disruption will be to diminish agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuels and noxious chemicals.
Second, you perpetuate the view of the cerrado as the expendable, scrubby neighbour of the far more glamorous Amazon rainforest. In fact, it has more plant and animal species than any other savannah in the world and is more threatened than the rainforest—at least in the coming decade. The world is moving rapidly into a food crisis and there are no free lunches.
Daniel Nepstad
Woods Hole Research Centre
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
SIR – You are correct to say that recent innovations in Brazilian agriculture have been truly miraculous. However, the cerrado needs a second miracle—one of conservation and sustainable use—if any of this unique biome is to survive.
Conservation is urgent not just to prevent the loss of 12,000 plant species of which 40% are found nowhere else. The cerrado is also providing ecosystem services. Recent climate-vegetation models suggest that excessive cerrado clearance could lead to the drying up and loss of rainforest in south Amazonia.
Professor Toby Pennington
Dr James Ratter
Professor Mary Gibby
Professor Stephen Blackmore
Royal Botanic Garden
Edinburgh
*SIR – Your story promoting the expansion of commercial agriculture in Brazil’scerrado, and its imitation by African countries ignored the fact that the cerrado is the biologically richest savannah on earth. It is the home of unique wildlife and nearly half of its highly diverse plant community is found nowhere else on earth. Nevertheless you repeated the centuries-old error of seeing savannahs, grasslands and prairies as worthless and empty, fit only for conversion to pastures and soyabean fields. This, despite the fact that over half of the cerrado has already been converted—far more than the Amazon rainforest.
Ironically, Brazil itself has moved beyond this outdated point of view. Most of its remarkable increase in agricultural output in recent years has come from increasing yields, not from expansion of cultivation and pastures, and its national plan to combat climate change establishes the goal of reducing deforestation in the cerrado by 40% over the next decade (and by 80% in the Amazon). This is the kind of far-sighted plan that other countries should be imitating, not your clear-it-all boosterism.
Doug Boucher
Union of Concerned Scientists
Washington, DC
*SIR – Although you are right in describing Brazil’s cerrado as a “miracle”, your reasoning for the accolade is wide of the mark. The importance of the cerrado to Brazil’s people and economy and to the increasing demands of “feeding the world” should not go unnoticed. But neither should its relationship with the Amazon, or its own ecological importance.
True enough, the land in this vast savannah has become more economically valuable due largely to soyabean plantations. Also true is that “hardly any of this new [agricultural] land lies in Amazonia”. Yet, the resultant rises in land value have simply pushed cattle-ranching into the Amazon.
Neither should we forget the ecological importance of both areas. The Amazon has long been the “poster-boy” for conservation messaging, but the cerrado is a biodiversity miracle in its own right: home to 5% of the world’s biodiversity from the giant armadillo to the maned wolf (both already endangered) and over 10,000 plant species, 44% of which are endemic.
Two-thirds of the area has already disappeared. To save what remains will require more sustainable production. We are not asking for a miracle. We are simply asking for agriculture to be reconciled with biodiversity conservation. Through the Roundtable on Responsible Soy, we are working with some of the world’s leading businesses to ensure that happens.
David Nussbaum
CEO,WWF-UK
Godalming, Surrey
*SIR – The Amazon is not the only diverse ecosystem in Brazil; the cerrado is the most biologically diverse savannah in the world. Less than 3% is protected. Agriculture and ranching, of which you speak so glowingly, are the prime causes of the cerrado’sendangered status. Much of the agriculture is cash crops and not foodcrops like race and beans. Growing soyabeans which are then exported to feed pigs in North America and Europe is by no means a sustainable activity, nor is increasing ranchland to grow more beef. Yes, it’s a scientific miracle, but at what cost?
Amartya Saha
Southeastern Environmental Research Centre, Florida International University
Miami
*SIR – Embrapa could not have been established without a cadre of well-trained scientists available to staff the institution. These scientists were available because Brazil identified talent and many of these young people received higher education training in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia. The development of institutions to solve our food security challenges can only occur if we invest in the intellectual capital of nations and then create the institutions that enable those well-trained Scientists To Have Gainful employment. Training Programmes Such Have Been Greatly Reduced in the Past Two Decades by many Developed Countries. Reinvigorating Them to target areas with the greatest Challenges in food security can lead to Successes That Such as seen in Brazil.
MM Alley
Past President, American Society of Agronomy
Professor of Agriculture, VirginiaTech
Blacksburg, Virginia
