Please prove that it's not the other way around:
The land left by the cattle ranchers is used by the only long term agricultural activity, sugar production, who buy it fully legal (in the case of a new sugar plantage).
Why shall the last and long term user be attacked instead of the very source of deforestation, the illegal loggers, the soy bean growers and the cattle ranchers, who only wanders around, destroying everywhere?
Why?

I have asked you before;
Is it OK if I steal your car just because I just sold or left my old?
Who would be the criminal then?
1. The new owner of my old car?
2. Me?
3. You?

You just don't get it, do you? Buying land does not make one responsible for what the seller spends the money on. Not even morally.

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I am not talking about any moral responsibility.
I am explaining the reasons for the deforestation of the Amazon.

An many with me are trying to explain that you are wrong. But you just don't get it.

Those who deny the correlation between expansion of sugarcane plantations in Brazil and the deforestation of the Cerrado and the Amazon belong to a minority.

/track_snake

I would certainly agree with you that there is a correlation, it was presented to you before but here it is again.




As you can see an increase in ethanol production correlates to a decrease of deforestation.

No lets try to make a theory of causation: More sugarcane production needs more land workers, currently ca half a million land workers are working in the sugercane production. There is a significant migration of sugarcane workers from the poorest region of the Brasil, the North- Northeast region, to Sao Paolo state, the richest and the most important producer of sugarcane in Brazil.

Those poor land workers would otherwise probably be engaged in illegal logging activities back in the north (the Amazon rainforest) which also is a labor intensive (and very dangerous) job.

/Aryan

Well...

A cane cutter is usually a cane cutter all his life.

What has happened is that cane cutters from the north go to the Sao Paulo region during high season to get extra jobs as cane cutters and then return to their hometown during off-season in Sao Paulo region where they work as less paid cane cutters or wait until next high season down south.

But now when UNICA is mechanizing its plantations down in the south at a fast pace those migrant workers are not needed any more. So maybe you are right, some of them will go to the Amazon region and be hired by illegal loggers...

But probably most will stay up north where plantations will continue to use manual cutting for many years to come.

/track_snake

I am not only attacking the sugar barons. I am attacking all the underlying reasons for the deforestation of the Amazon.

You must be kidding me. Do you seriously mean that an unemployed cane cutter rather starves than become a tree cutter?



The workers migration is not seasonal like you suggest but that is of no importance.



As long as there is expansion of sugarcane production industry other jobs will become available, another halv a miljon people currently work in Sugar Mills and ethanol distilleries. Properly trained an unemployed sugarcane cutter can be instructed to work in new distilleries or in the mechanical harvest, but once the growth in production stops and the mechanization continuous you get hundreds of thousands unemployed that might have no other means of living than illegal activities like logging

/Aryan

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It is not the same job cutting cane with a machete or cutting trees with a chainsaw. I said a cane cutter usually stays a cane cutter for all his life. He tends to go where there is cane-cutting jobs. If they mechanize plantations in the south, he goes back north where he came from and take those less paid cane-cutting jobs that will remain there for many years.

Some cane-cutters can of course get other jobs in the mechanized plantations but that applies mostly for those who already are permanently employed by the sugar mill in question. Of course there is a risk that some will go to illegal loggers.

Read here:

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/br/SugarCaneWorkers.htm

more about the seasonal migration of cane cutters as I described above.

And read especially the following sentence: When a property is Organic Certified it is FORBIDDEN to burn its sugar cane.

/track_snake

A rather big risk to take to have a couple of hundred thousand potential loggers hanging around don't you think?



As I said, not exactly like you suggest, but that is of no importance.



I am not supprised att all, but what would you like to have said with this? That burning the fields hunderds of km's from the rainforest causes deforestation in the Amazonas? You argumentation gets more and more bizarre.

/Aryan

No. What I mean is that Organic Certified Ethanol is already available and that you could buy that in Sweden so you don't need to contribute to the negative health effects on the Brazil population from the burning of sugar cane fields.

I am not saying that maybe a few of those cane cutters that will be laid off in the mechanization process might go to the Amazon and cut rainforest but it is not several hundreds of thousands. There are today about 400.000 cane cutters seasonally employed in the Brazil sugar cane plantations and maybe half of them will be laid off over a 20 year period due to mechanization.

/track_snake

Aha ok, yes of coarse that is better and the developments are going in that direction. In only a few years the level of mechanical harvesting in th SP region has increased from ca 30% to ca 50% at this rate it will be totally mechanical in only a few more years.
/Aryan