Day 241 - 26 Apr 96 - Page 54
1 year, yes. If we turn to the following page. It may be
2 worth noting that this includes the map which we have
3 served from Dr. Cotter.
4
5 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: I will read the first full paragraph and the next:
8
9 "Similar situations occur throughout Central America.
10 Rather than recognising tropical rainforests as valuable
11 natural resources, many central American politicians view
12 them as obstacles to national development. Not only do
13 they fail to conserve nationally owned forest land, but
14 they also provide legal and financial incentives to peasant
15 farmers and cattlemen to colonise and clear these forests.
16
17 "In many of the central American countries, in order to
18 gain title to a plot of federal forest land, the colonising
19 individual must simply 'improve' it by clearing it of
20 vegetation. Because individuals can obtain generous loans
21 from government and commercial banks to raise beef cattle,
22 they simply transform the rainforest into pastureland.
23
24 "By any of these methods of converting forest to pasture,
25 the end result is the same. After seven to ten years of
26 beef cattle yields, the effect of over grazing and
27 torrential rains turn the rainforest nutrient poor soils
28 into eroded wastelands. When this happens, the rancher
29 must find new crop land or rainforest to transform into
30 pasture.
31
32 "In these various ways beef cattle producers are expanding
33 their operations throughout the rainforests of Central
34 America, and destroying the forests' wild life and
35 agricultural production with equal disregard".
36
37 Then I will leave the rest of the page, save for the last
38 complete sentence which is about eight lines up starting
39 "Thus, in Costa Rica". It is the last complete sentence
40 on page 15: "Thus, in Costa Rica, where 71 per cent of all
41 new farm land is planted in beef cattle pasture, beef
42 production doubled between 1959 and 1972, but per capita
43 beef consumption fell from 30 pounds to less than 19".
44 That is in the context of the production is increasing but
45 local consumption is decreasing.
46
47 Actually, I continue to read that: "In Honduras, between
48 1965 and 1975, beef production jumped by almost 300 per
49 cent, but national per capita consumption dropped from 12
50 to 10 pounds. By most estimates, at least two-thirds of
51 Central America's arable land is now dedicated to cattle
52 production, yet the region's per capita beef consumption
53 continued to decline.
54
55 "Behind this illogical situation lies a simple fact the
56 expansion of Central America's beef cattle production is
57 largely a response to the lucrative beef import market in
58 the United States. As beef cattle production expands in
59 Central America, beef exports expand accordingly".
60
