Brazil's farm sector is only just realizing the need to protect
the Amazon rain forest but it could be many years before
deforestation stops, the agriculture minister said.
Brazil's fast-growing agriculture business, one of the world's
biggest food providers, is often blamed for much of the destruction
of the Amazon.
Government authorities, many farm product traders and some
producers are beginning to accept the need to conserve the world's
largest rain forest but appropriate policies and resources were
still inadequate, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes
said.
"Today Brazil has the conscience not to cut down trees to increase
its production," he said in an interview.
"The government has decided - no more deforestation. Now, it will
be at least a decade before the policies are in place and
working."
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeatedly boasted that
Brazil reduced deforestation by 50% over the last two years.
But record commodity prices are increasing the pressure to make
Amazonian land productive and deforestation has increased again
since last August, the environment ministry said.
Stephanes, a former congressmen, said Brazilian agriculture would
grow by recovering 50 million hectares of degraded pasture land, as
well as developing another 50 million hectares of virgin
savannah.
"What we cut down already is enough," he said.
But he said there were no funds or concrete policy to provide
farmers with incentives not to chop down trees.
"We haven't started yet, it's not necessary yet," Stephanes
said.
"This discussion is new, at least in this ministry, and still
needs to mature so we can create new lines of finance."
He said he fully supported the government's decision in December to
ban farm products coming from illegally deforested areas.
But its implementation was not his job, he said.
"If there are still people deforesting, that's a matter for the
police," he said.
A tradition of conquering and settling Brazil's huge wilderness
persists among many farmers and is an obstacle to environmental
awareness, the minister said.
Deforestation by small and mid-size farmers was likely to
continue.
"You'll have small infractions, the important thing is that the big
ones are over," he said.
Friends of the Earth said in a report that beef production in the
Amazon increased 46% since 2004 and now accounted for 41% of the
total output.
Stephanes said poor peasants and small-scale ranchers who
received land and loans as part of government social welfare
policies were partially to blame for beef production
increases.
Stephanes said cattle did not always occupy deforested areas in the
region.
But he urged meat packers to follow the example of soy traders and sign an agreement not to buy beef from deforested areas.
