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Califorestation In The Amazon Rainforest

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On the surface, expanding agriculture into the rainforest seems to be a fast and simple way to alleviate hunger and malnutrition, but in reality, the resulting environmental damage--in addition to being intrinsically harmful--would actually worsen the hunger that the expansion is trying to solve. In 2014, Brazil was removed from the UN World Hunger Map, an accomplishment that Social Development Minister Tereza Campello credits to “a mix of public policies and an increased food supply” (“World Hunger Map”). Unsurprisingly, at least a significant portion of the “increased food supply” came from agricultural expansion in the Amazon Rainforest, which currently hosts approximately 200 million cows (“Cattle Ranching”). Unfortunately for Brazil, its accomplishment of ending famine within its borders may be soon reversed. …show more content…

They determined that deforestation would cause a decrease in precipitation that would harm agricultural productivity by up to 34 percent (Kirby). As a result of reduced agricultural yields, the researchers ominously deduce that “‘total agricultural output may either increase much less than expected proportional to the potential expansion in agricultural area, or even decrease, as a consequence of climate feedbacks from changes in land use’” (Kirby). If the researchers’ direst prediction of a decrease in net agricultural output proves to be true, then every acre of agricultural land in the Amazon would actually take food out of the mouths of the malnourished. Even if their worst case scenario does not become true, the people still face an uphill battle against hunger as bigger and bigger swaths of land must be cleared in order to grow less and less food. In either case, the problem of hunger remains

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