5 ms·
It isn't quite true that cattle is the biggest driver of deforestation in the Amazon. The number one driver is soy. However, landowners will typically deforest
by framecowbird 5y ago
It isn't quite true that cattle is the biggest driver of deforestation in the Amazon. The number one driver is soy. However, landowners will typically deforest and then place cattle on land for five years, before converting to soy to circumvent regulation. This creates the impression that cattle was the driver, when it was in fact soy.
That said, a lot of the soy does feed cattle too!
- gffrd 5y agoReading this surprised me … How much is soy worth per acre? I assume the demand/payoff must be sizable to justify the cost of converting forest to agricultural land?
- framecowbird 5y agoSoy is exported at about 380 USD per ton, and yield is something like 3 tons per hectare. I'm not sure how much the farmer doing the deforestation gets though. But deforesting the Amazon is sadly very cheap. Much cheaper than it should be given the value of the Amazon. It's a disastrous market failure.