鈥淎 science journalist. I expect you鈥檙e just like the scientists and the
bureaucrats from the World Bank who come here. You are all in Brazil to try to
stop us exploiting the wealth of the Amazon. What arrogance! You鈥檝e already
destroyed all the forests in your own nations and so you come and lecture us
about the environment!
For once, let me give you a lecture. Let me try telling you a story that
might make you think.
Imagine that the history of the world had been different. Imagine that the
Renaissance, the explosion of scientific knowledge and the agricultural
revolution had not taken place in Europe but in one of the tropical countries.
Imagine that the many centuries of experimentation that your scientists, farmers
and breeders have put into agriculture for temperate regions had instead gone
into developing agriculture for tropical regions. The Amazon would now be the
breadbasket of the world and Brazil the richest country on Earth.
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Instead of your ecologists coming here with their romantic nonsense, it is
our ecologists that would be handing out unwanted advice. We鈥檇 visit the vast
prairies of the United States, like you visit the Amazon, and tell you that
there was no chance of ever building farms there, that the winters were too hard
and that there were not enough nutrients in the soil to support regular
harvesting. We鈥檇 tell you that your only hope was to learn from the native
Indians. You should leave the prairies to grass and each year just hunt a number
of buffalo guided by strict ecological principles. We鈥檇 tell you that to try
anything different would destroy the ecosystem for ever.
Yes, if history had been a little different, that鈥檚 how it would have turned
out. We鈥檇 have been providing the stupid advice. We鈥檙e not going to listen and
we鈥檙e going to develop the Amazon.
Needless to say, the agronomist did not stop there but went on to compare
Brazil鈥檚 treatment of its native peoples with the slaughter of the native
Americans in the US. But that is another story. The key question is whether the
agronomist was right. History has favoured the temperate regions. Could the
future lie with the tropics?
The agronomist鈥檚 complaints cannot be easily ignored. It is true that we have
destroyed our own forests. It is true that the investment in tropical
agriculture has been minuscule in comparison with that in temperate agriculture.
And it is true that many of the areas we now farm so productively were once
written off as barren. In the 1830s, local historians record that the prairie in
Iowa was seen as 鈥渨orthless for the purposes of agriculture鈥�. Only the
development of massive 鈥渂reaking ploughs鈥� turned Iowa into a breadbasket.
It is true also that temperate agriculture is underpinned by massive advances
in science and technology: fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, farm vehicles,
grain carriers, and genetic improvements to plants and animals. None of this
effort has been made in the tropics.
Does tropical agriculture really stand where temperate agriculture stood two
centuries ago? Could the Amazon end up like Iowa one day, a vast patchwork of
neat fields?
With this heresy in mind, and burning desire to find some answers, two of
New Scientist鈥檚 reporters set off for South America this July. They
went to ask three questions. First, could the rainforest of the Amazon ever be
cleared to create a highly productive agricultural region like Iowa and, if so,
what crops might be growing there?
Second, how did the Amazon rainforest ever get to be the way it is now, the
most complex ecosystem on Earth? And third, if it were cleared for agriculture,
how much do we know about the ecological conditions needed to conserve its
plants and animals?
All three answers were surprising. The region could well be used for
productive agriculture, despite what environmentalists say. Its amazing
diversity may have been created for the last reason you would expect in a 鈥渞ain鈥�
forest. And conserving the diversity of the Amazon may require ecology to write
a few new principles. For the full story, read on.
