Ranching operations cannot be initiated on forested land, and ranchers must transform the rainforest into grassland in order to commence operations. Deforesting the Amazon produces timber as a byproduct. Margulis calculated the value of the timber to be USD $203 per hectare of rainforest (57). For loggers, ranchers, and other agri-businessmen, they may see no more value in the rainforest than the USD $203/ha. that can be profited from the wood. However, Ioulia Fenton, the leader of the food and agricultural research stream at the Institute of Advanced Developmental Studies in Bolivia, would see their evaluation as incredibly short-sighted. She informs that, when harvested sustainably, the rainforest offers an infinite supply of “fresh water; wild foods; crops and livestock; wild fisheries; wood for fire and construction; fibers and other materials for arts and crafts; and natural biomedicines and pharmaceuticals” (Fenton). For the local and indigenous populations who reside in Amazonia, the rainforest is their lifeline; it keeps their hunger satiated, their bodies healthy, their houses standing, and their cultures intact. To deprive them of their rainforest is to deprive them of their way of life. Throughout post-Columbian history in the New World, non-natives have often committed such …show more content…
Between 1970 and 1995, the number of Amazonian residents earning less than the national average income fell from 100 percent to 80 percent, indicating “a not insignificant improvement in income levels” (Margulis 68). The logic of job creation makes sense; after all, someone must raise, tend, and slaughter all of the 200 million cows in the region, and the people who maintain the pastures receive money as compensation, which they can spend on food for their families. Unfortunately, the ranching industry simply doesn’t create enough jobs to feed everyone. According to Sergio Margulis, ranches typically create “an average of only 36 jobs per project” (49). In addition, cattle ranching is a low yield, low density operation (“Cattle Ranching”), meaning that ranchers produce only a small amount of agricultural output per unit area of arable land. According to the principle of economies of scale, such low density operations are too expensive to run if they are too small in size; therefore, economics forces the typical ranch to be large. This economic principle is visible in the real world: the average Amazonian ranch spans “several hundreds of hectares,” and “many ranches [reach] thousands of hectares” (“Cattle Ranching”). If a typical ranch contains hundreds of hectares of land