Thursday, June 21, 2007

Soy...this time for uk fishing fleet.

Soy, a crop grown in the tropics is a common vegan alternative to milk. It also tastes awful!

Besides being drank by a small number of vegans in this world it is also used to feed catle, make biodesil and now--potentially to help catch the worlds ever decreasing stock of fish (Details bellow).

Some of these uses are mind-bogglingly stupid. Biodesil in perticular, you just need so much soy and so much land, to make a small amount of desil. For other uses it makes more sense in my opinion. And before people criticise it as a drink, it must be realised that cattle that produce milk are often fed this and that the overall demand for land is far higher (cutting out the midleman--or cow--makes sense).

Anyway, here are a few photos of the expansion of Soy in Bolivia. Soy is the greatest cause of deforestation in Bolivia and is also a growing threat in Brazil and other tropical, forested nations.

In Bolivia (South America)...


Perticularly in the Santa Cruz Region, there is largescale deforestation, often in radial patterns...


Closer in we see that these small radially farmed sqaures dominate the landscape near Santa Cruz.





The latest development is described bellow...(more details here)


The EU and the UK government are financing a project to try and develop biofuels for the UK fishing fleet. The Sea Fish Industry Authority manage the project. The British company Regenatec want to import large quantities of Argentinean soya for biofuels for the fishing fleet. Soya expansion is the driving force behind the rapid destruction of Argentina's semi-arid Chaco forest and the humid Yungas forest. Tens of thousands of rural families have already lost their land to soya monocultures. Pesticide spraying from the air poisons communities, food crops, water and soils. As food production is displaced by soya, malnutrition rates are increasing. Soya monocultures are linked to high greenhouse gas emissions, both from deforestation and from the emission of nitrous oxide, which is nearly 300 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. Plans to use Argentinean soybean oil in the fishing fleet will further encourage the expansion of soy monocultures at the expense of ancient forests and local communities.


Please click on http://www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/
and ask those responsible for the project to drop those plans and, instead, to work to reduce climate change emissions by drastically reducing fuel use in the UK. This email alert is supported by Grupo de Reflexion Rural, Argentina (http://www.grr.org.ar/) and Biofuelwatch (http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/). Many thanks.

Yours sincerely,
Reinhard BehrendRettet den Regenwald
e. V.Friedhofsweg 2822337
Hamburg040 4103804
info@regenwald.org
http://www.regenwald.org/

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