the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

The cows grazed under the midday Amazon sun, near a wooden bridge spanning a river. It was an idyllic scene of pastoral quiet, occasionally broken by a motorbike growling on the dirt road that cuts through part of the Lagoa do Triunfo cattle farm to a nearby community.

But this pasture is land that the farm has been forbidden to use for cattle since 2010, when it was embargoed by Brazil’s government environment agency Ibama for illegal deforestation. Nearby were more signs of fresh pasture: short grass, feeding troughs, and salt for cattle.

The vast 145,000-hectare (358,302-acre) farm is one of several owned by the company AgroSB Agropecuária SA – known in the region as Santa Bárbara. Located in an environmentally protected area, Lagoa do Triunfo is more than 600km (372 miles) from the capital of the Amazon state of Pará on the western fringes of Brazil’s “agricultural frontier” – where farming eats into the rainforest.

Giles wrote:"We" can suggest and encourage that everyone at least eat less meat. As far as I understand (don't have time to quote sources right now, but shouldn't be a problem), eating moderate portions of (red) meat 2 or 3 times a week is enough to provide the various nutrients that are provided particularly easily by meat.

Everything else can usually be provided through eggs, dairy and vegetable products, and in most cases no meat but dairy is fine, and often eggs and dairy aren't really necessary either. Or only in smaller quantities.

And besides this, putting meat from mammals and birds on the plate is an extremely inefficient way of converting sunlight into (the full range of) nutrients for humans.

Giles: wrote Well, yes, but what's the relevance here? However chimpanzees pic'n'mix their diet, it doesn't lead to them destroying the jungle they live in.

Chimps are killing people in Uganda: 'It broke off the arm... opened the stomach and removed the kidneys'

"I did not expect them to hunt these relatively large rodents, or that they would even eat so much meat.

Giles: wrote

Well, yes, but what's the relevance here? However chimpanzees pic'n'mix their diet, it doesn't lead to them destroying the jungle they live in.

Deforestation fires are surging in the Amazon, eliminating more square kilometers of rainforest this year than they have since 2009.

In the Brazilian Amazon, fires are a common means of clearing the land -- land that is worth five times more without the forest than with the forest --
for cattle and soy fields.

Brazil is the world’s leading exporter of beef and soy, but there’s also a high demand for these goods domestically.