The Rachel Carson of Brazil

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

DALY: The large-scale nature of PROALCOOL seems to illustrate a general relationship between power and technology.

LUTZENBERGER: We have a vicious circle. The more complex and integrated the technology, the greater its demand for capital and its need for bureaucratic management. And the technocracy, in turn, demands and promotes only sophisticated and large-scale technologies that further concentrate economic power. That is why nuclear power or huge hydropower projectssuch as the 12,000-megawatt Itaipu plant—are favored by the government.

On a lower technological level, consider the average caboclo family of the Amazon. Living on the riverbank, they exist in the midst of plenty. They catch all the fish they can use. The forest provides an incredible variety of fruits, herbs, roots, and medicines. There is plenty of game. They have all the free fuel they need. They complement their diet with small gardens of manioc, sweet potatoes, beans, corn, and some vegetables. They keep a pig, a few chickens, and sometimes a cow or two. And the harm they cause the forest is well within its capacity for natural recovery.

Now, some agricultural extension programs are beginning to instruct such people in the methods of "modern" chicken—farming factories. "Scientifically balanced" rations are formulated in Manaus-600 miles away—by big firms that use corn, wheat, or soybeans imported from the U.S. and powdered milk from the European Common Market. The broilers and laying hens are hybrid, of course, which means the caboclos cannot use the eggs to reproduce their flocks themselves. Yet they are giving up their traditional, locally adapted chickens that are immune to many diseases . . . and, as a result, must use imported medicine, hormones, antibodies, etc.

And the buyer of the farmers' products is the firm that furnishes all the raw materials, so the small-scale chicken—raisers have absolutely no influence on price either way. All the risks are theirs . . . all the advantages are with the big companies.

Such programs—do no; provide means of improving food production. Instead, they create dependence. And this is really what "development" is all about. Independent individuals who have the ability to decide their own destinies are rapidly becoming extinct!

Indeed, the caboclos are—most of the time—simply displaced by immense agribusiness schemes that totally extinguish their paradise . . . send them to the slums in big cities far away . . . or employ them as inexpensive help under labor camp conditions. In not-so-rare cases, the big guy actually uses machine guns on "squatters" or "ferocious" Indians!

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print