Cattle Ranching In The Amazon Essay

However, due to more people searching for plots there is greater pressure on the amount of available land. The logging industry is responsible for a relatively small level of deforestation, accounting for 3% in Brazil. Consequently, all these activity contribute together to the rapid loss of what is left of the rainforest and a large proportion of the world’s biodiversity. All of the resources that the rainforest provides could be lost in the next 40 years.

Today, the total percentage of forest cover of the earth is approximately thirty percent (“Deforestation”). That is about nine percent of the world’s total surface. The largest rainforest is the Amazon River Basin, located in South America. The Amazon is home to many species of animals, insects, plants and trees. Many of the trees and plants in the Amazon produce about twenty percent of the oxygen on earth, and absorb carbon. However, the Amazon is decreasing in size every day due to the ongoing deforestation of the land. Deforestation is when the forest of the land are cleared or destroyed, in order to be used for other actions (“Deforestation”). The Amazon is twenty percent less than it was about forty years ago (Wallace). In just about

Together, coffee and cattle account for most of the deforestation of the Atlantic Forest and Amazon. Deforestation for agriculture and cattle, urbanization, human population growth, have resulted

This policy memo addresses the development and expansion of the cattle ranching industry in Brazil, which has contributed to the mass deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon in the last 40 years. It exposes the regional and global consequences to deforestation and provides strategies for the Brazilian government to sustainably manage cattle ranching industries while protecting the future of the Amazon. The rainforest ecosystem is an immense reserve of natural recourses that is far more valuable than the beef produced on Brazilian cattle ranches. Not only does the rainforest create habitat for up to 65% of the world’s biodiversity, but when harvested sustainably, it provides humans with an abundance of spices, foods, oils, medicines

The Amazon Rainforest is the largest rainforest and river basin in the world. It covers around 2.1 million square miles of land, and exists in eight different countries and one French Territory. The Amazon rainforest is one of the most diverse places on the planet, accounting for ten percent of all known species, with more being discovered every year. But in this fragile ecosystem, people see opportunity to make money and a lifestyle, sometimes even illegally, trying to profit in the logging, mining, and agriculture industries. However, these industries help contribute to the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest.

Approximately two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest and one-third of the remaining rainforest in the world is in Brazil. The Amazon is home to ten percent of the total known species worldwide, making Brazil the most biodiverse country in the world. However, deforestation and land conversion in Brazil are prevalent issues and a threat to the biodiversity, endangered species, and indigenous people that live in the Amazon.

18 million acres of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. Forests cover thirty percent of the earth. It is estimated that is one hundred years there will be no rainforests. The causes of deforestation are agricultural expansion, logging for timber, and infrastructure building.

Throughout the years, cattle have been an important to the daily life of many people. Some examples that are used from cattle are the red meat that is known as beef, their skin can also serve as a protector from harmful weather and also used in clothing, also the hobby of showing cattle is widely known in the Americas. So, how does the world keep the growing demand of cattle stable?

The cattles in the rainforest mainly eat the grass all the way down into the dirt, then they move into a new area to eat other fresh grass. When cattles eat the grass that regrows itself, over and over again, the soil turns poor and cannot be used unless it gets properly cared. Cattles also move to many new areas which takes up a lot of land then that leads to deforestation. The Cattle ranchers are the cause of about 80% of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. They’ve turned large areas of the rainforest into pastures. The rainforest has lost a large area of land due to deforestation, larger than the state of Washington - about a fifth of its rainforest. 55 square feet is cleared for every hamburger being sold. The benefit Cattle ranchers get from this is making leather for people, raising food for the world, and earning money for themselves and Brazil. Beef and milk are the two top livestocks in Brazil. Between 1996 and 2004, Brazil was the world's largest exporter. Many countries imported beef from Brazil. As for the rest of the world, what benefits us are, we get beef, milk, and skin from the cattles. United states and Europe are still importing beef from the Brazilian

Cattle are used for meat, dairy products, clothing, adornment, fertilizer, labor, land management, and conservation.

During the past 30 years, deforestation in the Amazon has been a huge problem. The Amazon Rainforest is home to an estimated one-third of all known animal species and makes up about half of the world’s rainforests. The reasons for the deforestation is to expand pastures for cattle production, and fields to grow soybeans. ("Brazil Geography-Introduction." N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2016.)

The cattle ranchers need the land for many purposes such as feeding the cows. According to the site Mongabay the cattle ranchers sometimes work with soy farmers in Brazil. The cattle rancher also clear the land and use it for low productivity cattle grazing. Cattle Ranchers often works with the farmers in Brazil to help clear

The main reason for this is to clear the land for farming. Farmers in rainforest countries

Land is greatly affected by the meat industry. The percentage of U.S. agricultural land used to produce meat is 56%. The strains on land include topsoil erosion and depletion of forested areas. The percentage of U.S topsoil loss directly associated with livestock raising is 85%. In Mexico 37 million acres of forest have been destroyed since 1987 to provide additional grazing land for cattle. The cattle industry is a driving force behind the destruction of the tropical rainforests. Until 1994, in the Amazon the total deforested area was of 450, 000 square Km. The current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforest amounts to one thousand per year. Various species of plants live in the tropical rainforest, which can be used for their medicinal properties. These plants need yet to be discovered. We can not afford to risk their extinction.

Rich black soil, towering tropical trees, the distant sound of a hollering monkey and the smell of damp leaves paint the picture of a tropical rainforest. The most famous and valuable tropical forests include the Amazon, Congo Basin, Indonesia and the forests of the Russian Far East and have been debated as endangered for decades. These rainforests mainly differ in soils, geology, precipitation patterns, the wildlife which resides there but all share the abundance of natural wealth including sturdy woods, medicines and spices and are sought out by many. However the long debated question still stands if deforestation is something of the past or an on going and current threat.