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Figure 15 Cattle ranching in Brazil’s forests UNEP, 2009
Invasion of Amazon’s forest in Brazil has also occurred as a perverse effect of monoculture expansion e.g. soybean in the Cerrado, displacing the cattle industry
into Brazil´s Amazon CIAT, 2012. Furthermore, cattle ranches and crop fields have replaced forest along the roads especially the Trans-Amazon highway,
thereby removing valuable timber from the remaining forest. As mentioned before, data for the other countries sharing the Amazon is rather
scarce and outdated. An ACTO document dating back from 1997 argued that in the Department of Caquetá Colombia’s Amazon, approximately 2 million hectares of
primary forests were cleared out for grazing, secondary forests and high- productivity crops at the beginning of the 1990s. In the case of Ecuador, the land
surface dedicated to pastures is larger than the one for crops around 82.5, livestock farming being the second most important productive activity in the
country after petroleum production, despite the negative impacts this activity has on the already fragile soils ACTO 1997.
6.1.3 Deforestation for biofuels and illicit crops
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Biofuels
The debate over the cultivation of crops for biofuels regarded as a strategy to mitigate climate change is also closely linked with the food security debate. For
instance, previous research in the Brazilian Amazon has illustrated that the expansion of biofuel crops, a present reality due to increased national and
international demand for biofuels and environmental standards, can have serious implications on goods and services providing from forests when forests are
converted to cultivated land or even on socio-economic conditions, where crops for biofuels are grown on already cultivated land. This may include a reduction in
livelihoods opportunities, new power relations between small- and large-scale farmers or change in land tenure patterns, among others Lima et al., 2011, which
may also have spillover effects on food security regarding access, utilization, distribution of food. At the same time, it has been, however, argued that only a
small portion of the soybean production in Brazil is used for biofuels Lima et al., 2011 but that in order to meet the biofuel production targets that the country
committed to, an additional 57,200 km² and 108,100 km² of sugarcane and soybean will be needed Lapaola et al., 2010.
In the last decade, Cunha da Costa 2004 advocated for biofuel production from palm oil in the Amazon degraded lands. The author selected this crop as biofuel
source due to its ability to generate income, create jobs, restore land, and avoid carbon emission from fossil fuels. Bioenergy crops are also being promoted in Peru´s
Amazon as alternative to coca plantations, especially in deforested land that is being converted to palm oil plantations Khwaja, 2010. Further analysis by Gibbs
et al. 2008 suggests that biofuels can provide a short-term carbon payback in highly degraded pastures of the Amazon. They acknowledged however, that biofuel
farming in such marginal lands will require more area than in better lands because of low yields, and may also need more intensive-energy management with inputs
such as fertilizers and irrigation water to be productive. This might imply that this crop can thrive to habitat change as well as more contamination derived of chemical
use. Moreover, Lapola et al. 2010 indicate that indirect land-use changes could offset any carbon savings from biofuels, especially when expanding into the
Amazonian forests, and may create a carbon debt to repay in 250 years when using them instead of fossil fuels.
Based on projections for 2005-2014, a FAO analysis on the possible impacts of soybean production in the MERCOSUR countries and Bolivia indicates that food
production in the region will not be affected by soybean production, but that small
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farmers’ vulnerability will increase, due to the absence of safety nets for their production FAO, 2007.
Recent research has shown, however, that oil palm expansion, encouraged by the high financial return of the seed compared to soybean or beef and the “logging
subsidy” producers benefit from is likely to threat standing forests in the Brazilian rainforest, as a consequence of Malaysian investments in the palm oil sector in
Brazil and the proposed revision of the forest law, which would allow for the conversion of up to 30 of the Brazilian Amazon into oil palm plantations Butler
and Laurence, 2009. Researchers at the Woods Hole Research Center calculated the potential of oil plantations in the Brazilian Amazon and came to the conclusion
that the forest area is far more suitable for oil palm 2.283 million km² than for soybean 390,000 km² or sugar cane 1.988 million km² Nepstad et al., 2007
.
Currently there are a number of public and private initiatives for biofuel production in the Peruvian Amazon. The departments with greatest potential for sugar cane
and oil palm are San Martín, Loreto and Ucayali a total area of 1,074,756 hectares suitable for these crops. Additionally it is estimated that 270 biofuel processing
plants could be installed, which could bring benefits to local communities in terms of employment and income generation. Moreover, research found that future biofuel
production could become an important productive activity in the region, contributing to meeting domestic demand for biofuels. Infrastructure and
technology for the production of biofuels, however, currently poor IIAP and SNV, 2008.
In other cases, land clearing for different industrial activities may not have direct impacts on food security, but may change consumption patterns and diets given
birth to a new consumerism wave, including canned food or alcoholism and further spawn social problems such as displacements, changes in traditional culture or
power relations at community level, among others González, 2003.
Coca plantations
These plantations of coca promote clearing up forested areas, especially as growers seek to hide their crops, which mean growing in more isolated areas, under trees or
combined with licit crops. Most coca plantations are found in Colombia mainly in Caquetá and Putumayo Figure 16. According to ACTO, the expansion of coca
cultivation in Colombia diminished food self-sufficiency in the Amazon in the 1980s,
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due to displacement of the rural population to the coca zones, and the decay of traditional agricultural activities.
Figure 16. Illicit crops in Colombian Amazon 2008 to 2011. Own elaboration, based
on SIMCI data 2008 to 2011 Previous research has pointed out the comparative profitability of coca plantations
in relation to, for instance, cultivation of banana, maize, cassava, pineapple, etc, given that transportation is ensured by intermediaries and not by the farmers
Figure 17. 2000
4000 6000
8000 10000
12000
Ilic it
C rops
ha
Colombian Amazon Departments
2008 2009
2010 2011
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Figure 17. Internal rate of return compared coca with other crops. Ananás =
pineapple, Caucho = rubber, Maíz = maize, Yuca = cassava, dulce = sweet, amargo = bitter. Source: SINCHI 1999 in Gonzales Posso 2000
Figure 18. Coca cultivation in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. Source: UNODC 2007,
cited in UNEP et al. 2009 Previous research in the Colombian Amazon has shown that coca plantations, while
considered a highly profitable rural activity in many parts of the region, have severely impacted food security of the population living where the crop is cultivated.
Indigenous populations have started to switch to canned food instead of eating fish and cultivating crops, since cultivation of coca can become more profitable.
Likewise, this phenomenon was also caused by the colonization of Amazonian territories with raspachines “coca leaf pickers”, who arrived in the late 1970s in
the region and imposed different, western-based consumption patterns. They “lack a farming culture and import from cities of the interior and often from neighbor
countries a large part of the food they consume and at high prices” Gonzales Posso, 2000. Moreover, coca cultivation has also impacted people’s health, due to the
contamination of rivers with pesticides and herbicides used in order to increase profits from coca plantations Gonzales Posso, 2000.
6.1.4. Deforestation for infrastructure development
