Tropical Rainforests

Presently, worldwide livestock production accounts for 70% of all agricultural land and 30% of the land surface of the planet. According to Jim Motavalli, former editor of E. magazine, “The livestock industry accounts for the single largest human-related use of land, with 26 percent of the ice and water free surface of the planet devoted to grazing”. Approximately 260 million acres of forest in the U.S. have been cleared for crop, pasture and rangeland in order to cater to a meat-centered diet. This imbalance has led to over-grazing and heightened levels of ammonia in the soil, causing it to slowly become too acidic for crops to grow (a large scale livestock farm may emit as much as 5 million pounds of ammonia annually). In the U.S. alone, more than 260 million acres of forest have been clear-cut for animal agriculture.

So when we stare down at the meal on our dinner plates we must connect it to the land on which it was grown. As consumers we can place food into two new categories: rather than “organic vs. conventional”, we should think in terms of “sustainable vs. unsustainable”. As much as possible, before purchasing a tomato, apple, or pint of milk take the time to find out if it was produced using sustainable methods. Essentially this is a vote for ourselves, because sustainable agriculture will continue to feed us, and our children, for generations, while unsustainable methods are polluting, insatiable, and finite. If the CEO’s of today’s largest farms fail to learn from the past then they too will be finding themselves trying to grow crops without their most essential ingredient: quality topsoil, and this will happen just as the planet goes through another population explosion.

Sadly, as all this is happening much of the land that has been bought, battered or burned is in the tropical rainforest. The world’s rainforests represent one of the best cures for our tainted atmosphere but they are being removed at a pace that is almost too fast to fathom. Every year we lose 32 million acres of tropical rainforest - an area about the size of England. Of the original eight million square miles of tropical rainforest more than half has been burned or bulldozed, 70% of the former Amazon rainforest (our planet’s breathing source) is being used for grazing or cropland. Not too surprisingly then, for each hamburger that originates from a cow raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest has to be destroyed.

More puzzling still is that while more than half of the planet’s original rainforests have been clear cut to be used for livestock or crop production, most rainforest land is not an optimal setting for grazing. Large scale farms continue to carve out more rainforest land each year to accommodate beef and dairy cows, as well as massive amounts of soy being grown as cow and chicken feed. According to the nonprofit group Greenpeace: all the animals and trees in more than 2.9 million acres of rainforest were destroyed in the 2004-2005 crop season in order to grow crops that are used to feed animals. Additionally, nearly eighty-percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon results from cattle ranching. More than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture since 1996, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, an area larger than France.

The importance of the earth’s rainforests cannot be overemphasized. Under normal conditions rainforests are the most diverse and complex areas on the planet. The combination of limited sunlight (due to the overhead canopy), mixed with prolific rainfall (often 100 inches per year) makes it an optimal place for the growth of completely unique plants that are both rare, resilient, and medicinal. Some of the plants have evolved high up on the tree branches and are able to extract moisture directly from the air. Many others climb up the tree trunks to grab any sunlight that they can reach. And then there are the “heterotrophs”, a non-photosynthetic plant similar to a mushroom, that can live on the forest floor, finding nutrition in decaying organic matter and root systems. These dense forests are home to half of the planet’s animal and plant species; as an example, a four-square-mile area of rainforest may contain as many as 1,500 different types of flowering plants, many of which we still do not fully understand.

Besides the fact that the rainforest mitigates the effects of Global Warming, the rare and exotic plant life is an amazingly rich source of herbal and pharmaceutical medicine. At least 120 prescription drugs sold worldwide are derived directly from rainforest plants. Many of the compounds used to treat malaria, hypertension, bronchitis, diabetes, among other common diseases are found in abundance in tropical rainforests. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, more than two-thirds of all medicines that have been found to have cancer-fighting properties come from rainforest plants. When we destroy rainforest land we are not only putting entire groups of species at risk of extinction but we are permanently destroying many opportunities for the continued health and survival of human beings.

When a diet is replete with animal protein it can be easy to forget that all of our food can be traced back to plants and soil. Humans can’t eat animals unless animals first eat plants. Animals can’t eat plants unless the land is rich and healthy enough to grow them. This simple fact of nature’s food cycle should remind us that all of our nutrients and amino acids come to us from plant life. We can therefore state, without hyperbole, that no soil means no life. This is a particularly sobering thought when we consider that most of the world is using it up faster than we can replace it, indeed, many areas of the once fertile and productive Middle East can no longer grow any food at all. Many scientists point to topsoil loss as an equally pressing problem as global warming, but as long as most varieties of food remain so abundant (at least ostensibly, if you happen to be among the middle class) then it rarely gets mentioned as a critical issue.

On a more personal level, by eating lower on the food chain, or at least finding out where our meat and soy comes from, we can all help to halt the ongoing destruction of the world’s tropical rainforests. If the slash and burn practices, that have been going on for decades, are allowed to continue at the present rate we will not only destroy one of nature’s most miraculous havens but we will also lose our single best ally in the fight against global warming. For this reason it is a mistake to think that these natural wonders belong only to the governments where they are located or to the corporations that exploit them. We should treat them as our own back yard, because whether you live in Brazil or Siberia the rainforests have many unseen affects on our planet’s atmosphere and on medicinal remedies, many of which are still yet to be discovered.