BRAZIL NUTS: HIGHER INCOME THAN CATTLE BEEF WITHOUT DESTROYING THE FOREST

Why the European growing taste for cheap Brazilian beef is devastating the Amazon. With the UK sourcing 40 per cent of its processed beef from Brazil, campaigners are now calling for a consumer boycott. Export market Between 1996 and 2006, Brazil’s beef exports rose eight-fold to over two million tons of carcass weight (about 1.4 million tons of edible meat) a year, where it has roughly remained, making it the world’s top beef exporter, in part because large swaths of the Amazonian forests have been burned. About 80 per cent of these areas were turned into low-yield pastureland for Zebu beef originally imported from India that thrive in tropical climates but produce less meat than Western breeds. Did you know that? A single Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa, family Lecythidaceae) can produce one thousand kg of nuts per year. The carrying capacity of bovine meat in Amazonian pastures is only 50 kg per hectare per year. The tree survives for more than 500 years. Around 20,000 tons of Brazil nuts are harvested each year, of which Bolivia accounts for about 50%, Brazil 40%, and Peru 10% (2000 estimates). In the sequence of photos below: The tree (from 30 to 50m tall) occurs in large forests on the banks of the rivers Amazon, Rio Negro, Tapajós, and Orinoco. The leaves are dry-season deciduous. The fruit is heavy and rigid containing the hard shelled capsules. The capsule contains a small hole at one end, which enables large rodents like the agouti to gnaw it open. They then eat some of the nuts inside while burying others for later use; some of these are able to germinate into new Brazil nut trees. The hard shelled capsule which contains the real Brazil nut. The Brazil nut