Bryanna
Owner/Moderator
2216 posts
Nov 01, 2007
10:18 PM
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On my FAQs page, added today:
http://www.bryannaclarkgrogan.com/page/page/593450.htm#95152
Q: Isn't the growing of soy responsible for massive deforestation in Latin America and elsewhere?
A:
Actually, yes-- but what you are not often told is that MOST OF THIS SOY IS GROWN TO FEED ANIMALS WHICH ARE GOING TO BE SLAUGHTERED FOR MEAT, MOSTLY IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE!! Increasingly, deforestation is being caused also by soy,corn, and palm oil grown for bio-fuel (for the same market: http://www.pig8soy.org/node/63 ). (More on deforestation for biofuel: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37035
Another excellent article: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel)
From ourfood.com, a German database of food and related sciences:
“Soy and feed: According to Jörg Michael Greef from the German from the Bundesforschungsanstalt für Landwirtscaft. The world production of soy is 220 million tons. Germany imports 40 million tons. Three million tons are used for the production of edible oil and other applications. The main core of 37 millions tons are transformed in animal feed.
Soy farms built monocultures in USA, Argentina and Brazil, where they invade the tropical forest and savannahs. Centralised animal breeding, depending on soy are an environmental false step.
Palm oil: According to the Environmental Program of the United Nations UNEP, 83% of palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaisia. The consumption of Palm oil increases deforestation of these countries.”
From an article entitled "Soy in Numbers":
http://www.pig8soy.org/en/node/50
" Mon, 05/28/2007
Production of soy worldwide has, in the past three decades, grown from 55 million tonnes (1975) to 223 million tones in 2006, a growth of 324%. The demand made a sudden jump in the 1990's when bones and other leftovers from the meat industry were no longer allowed to be used as a protein source in animal feed. A third of today's soy harvest comes from South America, while the US is still one of the world’s largest soy producer. But while the US mostly uses its soy for its own meat production, countries in South America export theirs' to Europe and China.
Argentina exports 94% of its soy production (2004), and Brazil exports 76%. In the past years, the area of soy plantations in South America increased with 3.5 million hectares yearly (the size of the Netherlands). In Argentina and the US, almost all soy is genetically modified. In Brazil, where GM-soy was officially forbidden until President Lula came in power, around 44% is now GM.
The European soy import is 39 million tons yearly, or a line of 23,000 kilometers with loaded trucks. Around 90% of the European imports are used as animal feed.
sources:
'Soja Doorgelicht' (brochure from the Dutch Soy Coalition)
the Oil Mill Gazetteer, Volume 110"
From the article "Paving the Amazon with Soy":
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11756
"The sprawling state of Mato Grosso, in central west Brazil, could be thought a paradise of sorts, at least from a distance. The lush rainforest of the Amazon basin, often called the “lungs of the world,” straddles the state, as does the grassy Brazilian savanna or cerrado. Parrots, jaguars and pumas are just a few of the abundant species found in the savanna, considered one of the most biodiverse in the world, along with endangered species like the maned wolf, anteater and river-dwelling giant otter.
The landscape, however, is rapidly being altered as vast fields of soybeans and cattle ranches replace grasslands and forests. Soy rules Mato Grosso and it's not the soy that much of the world associates with the ostensibly eco-friendly, vegetarian diet, either.
In the wake of the Mad Cow disease scare, soy producers have benefited from increased demand in affluent countries for meat from cows that are fed soy meal, rather than animal-based feed. This is only the latest in a series of factors that have allowed a company named the André Maggi Group to spearhead, along with the Brazilian government, the expansion of soy in Mato Grosso and adjacent states over the last two decades, with disturbing consequences."
From another article:
http://www.lasojamata.org/?q=node/81
"The basic problem is the occupation of Paraguay's agricultural land by soy, destined for export to Europe and China in order to produce meat in livestock factories. This problem is precisely what is not addressed by the Roundtable. They want to solve problems, by trying to unite all interest groups (multi stakeholder process) through market mechanisms.
Very few participants in the Round Tables are interested in questioning the model of industrial livestock production in Europe. As long as we eat lots of cheap poultry and pork in Europe, without producing our own feed for this industry, the pressure on South America's agricultural lands will be kept up."
From yet another article:
http://www.ivu.org/articles/net/hippo2.html
" Take India for example. Mareka Gandhi, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in the Government of India states:
"In a country where millions of people go hungry 37% of all arable land is being used to grow fodder for animals that are being raised and killed for export. As if that were not enough we are exporting soy beans to feed European livestock, who will in turn be murdered for meat. These kinds of figures cry out against any kind of meat production at all, compassionate or otherwise. I see no reason why India should feed the world at the expense of her own land, her water, her people, her hunger.""
More to read on this subject:
The Underlying Causes of Deforestation
http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/indirect.html
Soy for Meat-- Ecosystem Threat
http://www.pig8soy.org/node/55
What Meat Production does to South America
http://www.pig8soy.org/node/58
Soy in the Amazon
http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/fall/joseph-soy-amazon/
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