Agro-business on the Edge of the Amazon

Sunday´s trip to Asensión de Guarayos was our first lengthy excursion out of the fine city of Santa Cruz, and thus offered a second, and more thorough, chance to see the countryside. I was quite excited for this opportunity because Santa Cruz is just south-west of the Amazon basin, which has captured my imagination for as long as I can remember. We left our hotel at 6:30 in the morning and after overloading Germán´s truck with Alejandro, Hernan and our supplies, headed north-east on a surprisingly well-paved 2 lane highway.
Once clear of the city, we were greeted by the lush green countryside - dense tropical forest interspersed with large clearings. Some of the clearings were being grazed by cattle - their clearly visible ribs attesting to the fact that tropical grasses are not incredibly nutritious. The remainder were mostlplanted with soy. At bend in the road I hoped that we would leave the agricultural area, and get to see some relatively undamaged forest. However, after more than an hour it became apparent that I wasn´t seeing dense tropical forest interespersed with large clearings, but rather enormous fields bordered by remaining patches of sparse tropical forest.

The generally nutrient-poor soil of the amazon basin is not great for agriculture. Usually small patches that have been burnt away can support crops for a few rainy seasons before the soil becomes exhausted. It isn´t the ideal location for enormous soy plantations or cattle ranches. Which, I presume, is why Dow Chemicals has such a strong presence in the area. Billboards advertising their wonder pesticides and fertilizers to soy growers were a very common site on both sides of the highway for most of our drive, giving the impression that this type of agriculture is very chemical-dependant.

I expected the owners of huge soy plantations and cattle ranches like these to be very well off. To my surprise, however, the only dwellings visible near the farms were very basic thatched-roof, mud brick huts. They were sturdy looking and well-maintained, but certainly not extravegant. Whether the people who live in them own the large farms (which I find doubtful), work on the large farms, or try to carve out a meager existance by farming small patches of land next to the large farms remains a mystery to me.

To my relief, after about 2 or 2.5 hours driving (including passing through a town with the amusing name of 4 Cañadas) we finally entered hilly landscape of Guarayos. The transition from Saskatchewan-like flatness to rolling hills with impressive granitic rock outrcrops coincided with a disappearance of the large soy farms, and a significant decrease in the number of cattle ranches. At last, we were able to witness some substantial patches of relatively undisturbed jungle. Located in the midst of this beautiful landscape is our pilot project site, Asensión de Guarayos.

Though I expected that the landscape around Santa Cruz would not exactly be prestine, and realized that rainforests are cleared for agriculture all over the world, seeing it in person brought it home a lot harder than reading about it in a textbook or a Lonely Planet guide. I understand that people have to eat, and that Bolivians need jobs, but I can´t help but believe that there must be a better way to provide these essentials than destroying one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world to grow chemical-soaked soybeans. Not to mention the fact that a large portion of the profits go to a US-based megacorporation and that the vast majority of the beans are used to fatten up farm animals in overseas feedlots rather than feed people directly.

ON a more positive note, there are alternative agricultural practises being used in the Amazon basin. For example, yesterday Janaki and I found some chocolate coated Brazil nuts that were made in La Paz from nuts and cocoa beans that had been harvested from wild plants in the Bolivian Amazon basin. No rainforest clearing necessary and another example of delicious locally produced food.