Written by Kadir van Lohuizen
Monday, 09 August 2010 13:42
Every eight seconds the size of a football field disappears in the Brazilian Amazon. Not so much for the wood, but to create pastures for cows.
Brazil with 200 million cows has the biggest commercial cattle herd in the world and is beef producer No 1 in the world.
According to the FAO (United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization), cattle generates 18 percent more greenhouse gas emissions then cars and is a major source of land and water degradation. Because of the methane gas cows release, meat production is one of biggest threats to global warming nowadays.
“The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level.” “Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing”, says a FAO´s report
Most of the deforestation for pastures is illegal. In the dry season the forest is on set on fire leaving a graveyard of burned trees. These forest fires are also a serious contributor to global warming. After the burning, bulldozers clear the area. Wood that remains is often used to produce charcoal in ovens, which are scattered in the states of Para and Mato Grosso. The charcoal is used in blast furnaces in and outside Brazil. After the land has been cleared planes drop grass seeds to create the pastures.
© Kadir van Lohuizen
Before Kadir van Lohuizen became a photographer he was a sailor and started a shelter for homeless and drug addicts in Holland. He was also an activist in the Dutch squatter movement. He started to work as a professional freelance photojournalist in 1988 covering the Intifadah.In the years after he worked in many conflict areas in Africa, such as Angola, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Liberia and DR Congo. From 1990–1994 he covered the transition in South Africa from apartheid to democracy. Recently Kadir has covered the conflict in Darfur, Chad and in Lebanon. Since hurricane Katrina happened he has made several trips to the USA to cover the aftermath and continues his work on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina still today. In 2006 Kadir started a new project: a visual investigation on migration in the America’s. For this he travels from Terra del Fuego (Patagonia) to Northern Alaska.
Click here to read more about him
