Structure of Answer: (Paragraphing)
Introduction
1st Paragraph - How Much Deforestation Is Caused By Farmers?
2nd Paragraph - What Type Of Farming Is Most Destructive In Different Parts Of The World?
3rd Paragraph - Why Are The Farmers Doing This?
4th Paragraph - What Other Factors Are To Blame?
Conclusion
What to put in the Introduction:
Mention:
-Deforestation and Loss of the World’s Rainforests are becoming more and more frequent. This is a rising problem that will not just fix itself
- There have recently been lots of Rainforest Fires, especially in the Amazon and in Australia
- As an area bigger than London is cut down everyday, what and who is actually causing this.
Facts for Introduction
- One Hectare cut down every second
- An area bigger than London is cut down daily
- 25% of the Amazon has been lost since 1970.
What to put in the 1st Paragraph
How Much Deforestation Is Caused By Farmers?
Mention:
-The main reason why the Rainforest are being cut down so quickly is due to Agriculture (the science and practice of farming), which makes up 80% of rainforest deforestation.
- This is not helped by the sheer amount of farmers using the same way and technique of farming, which is Slash and Burn Farming
- This, in theory is sustainable as you can only sue the land for 5 years, move on and let the vegetation re-generate, but now isn’t as there are simply too many people doing this, and taking too much at once, which is an example of the Subsistance Farmers getting greedy or external national or global pressure, which is a rising problem due to more than 148 people being added to the world every minute.
Facts for 1st Paragraph
- Agriculture makes up 80% of Rainforest Deforestation
- Roughly 7% of the world’s population use the Slash and Burn Agriculture, therefore meaning that 200 and 500 million people do this today
What to put in the 2nd Paragraph
What Type Of Farming Is Most Destructive In Different Parts Of The World?
Mention:
-The types of farming that are destructive around the world vary from country to country
- In Brazil the cause of deforestation is mainly down to Cattle Ranches (60%) and Small-Scale Subsistance Farming (33%)
- In places such as Indonesia and Borneo, deforestation has mainly occurred due to them being replaced with Palm Oil Plantations.
- Doing things like this, growing Palm Oil Plantations or just growing one highly profitable product in bulk also decreases the amount of biodiversity in the area and essentially kills the ecosystem and all of it’s inhabitants, also meaning that species could go extinct, even further harming the Rainforest, but also everything else around it. This effectively makes this worse than Cattle Ranching and Subsistance Farming e.c.t
- Around the world, Exports and TNC’s also have a large effect in what types of farming takes place, as if there was a product in really high demand, most people would grow this product, on an extortionately large scale and sell it to the the Exports and TNC’s for high amounts of money, which leads onto the next point…
- This is why nearly any type of farming becomes very destructive towards the rainforests and shows why some farmers just don’t care about anything else than money, rather than our world
Facts for 2nd Paragraph
- Cattle Ranches (60%) and Subsistance Farming (33%) are the biggest causes of Deforestation in the Amazon
- Since 1990, Indonesia has lost 1/4 of it’s Rainforest, with the main cause being the Palm Oil Plantations
- There were plans to get up to to 10 million hectares of Palm Oil Plantation by the start of this year (2020) in Borneo
What to put in the 3rd Paragraph
Why Are The Farmers Doing This?
Mention:
-There are many reasons why farmers do this, even if they know that what they are doing is wrong and has a negative impact on the worldwide scale, they still do it anyway
- This could be because Subsistance Farmers themselves really need the food and the money, which is a result of local pressure and affect the person locally
- This could be because a country is in debt and are cutting the trees to sell the wood and use the space to make Plantations or raise cattle and grow crops, or they could pay some farmers, or force ordinary people into doing this, which puts them under national pressure and affect the country on a national scale
- This could be because a group of independent farmers have been tasked by a global company to source them some products on a large scale, which then puts them under global pressure, meaning it will end up making them use more rainforests and resources to complete this objective
- As a result of all the things that happen on a Local Scale, a person cutting a tree, selling it to their Government or Traders, then moves onto a National Scale, when when it is internationally shipped from there, means it’s now moved onto an International Scale, and it has all started from that one farmer.
Facts for 3rd Paragraph
- There are large amounts of global pressure put on Rainforest Countries
- Developing Rainforest Countries are in debt and need to pay this off
- Local Farmers may have no choice rather than to work for large corporations for money.
What to put in the 4th Paragraph
What Other Factors Are To Blame?
Mention:
-As mentioned earlier, Agriculture Farming takes up 80% of deforestation. Of course, the is another 20% of other factors left, which are still very relevant
- Other factors could be the economic growth of developing and already highly developed countries. As they get richer, their people won’t only be able to afford more, but they’ll be more greedy, and if one country get wealthier other countries will in turn, get poorer, creating a bigger divide in the rich and poor.
- Farming isn’t the only thing that rainforests are useful for, if there is evidence to that there are large amounts if ores buried in the ground, rainforests will be chopped down and the ground will be dug up to start to wield the resources
- For example, the Carajas Complex in the Amazon is the largest iron ore mine on the planet with 3,000 men toiling at all times
- Some parts of Rainforests are chopped down for Economic Development, as some developing, which are still expanding don’t have enough open space to facilitate their people in so the Rainforests are cut to build to be replaced with rods cities and housing; another example of this in a national scale
- Rainforests are also removed to accommodate the space for local energy sources for the country, which can be renewable. For example, the Tucuri Dam was built into the Amazon, using water from the Amazon River to generate energy to the growing Brazilian population. However it then ended up flooding 1750km^2 of tropical rainforest.
Facts for 4th Paragraph
- The Tucuri Dam in Amazonia opened in 1985 and cost $6 billon. It then went on to flood 1750km squared of Rainforest
- The Carajas Complex has around 3,000 workers there at any moment and use machines including trucks that are the size of houses.
What to put in the Conclusion
Mention:
-Overall, the farmers themselves are to blame, as the stats don’t lie, with 80% of deforestation being down to them. HOWEVER, this situation is not helped by the rest of the world as the richer areas need to act less spoilt and demanding, for products
- These are the people who aren’t even affected in the rainforest (the natural animals and plants are) and us, the richer people, don’t see what is really happening. It is these rich people who are the ones who are having an affect biggest on Deforestation, therefore the Globe. (Leads onto the subject of Climate Change )
- As Climate Change grows into a bigger and bigger if a problem, more and more people are taking away more and more of one thing that takes away the CO2 and replaces it with Oxygen, which are trees (and trees are found in rainforests) and instead using these areas for Cattle Ranching and replacing the trees with animals such as Cows, which produce Methane (CH4), which has 21 times more of an affect than CO2.
- To fix this problem, the public need to be less demanding for such products and what happens locally needs to change too. Certified Farms need to be created, rather than uncertified farms, meaning farms that do take up the rainforest are managed effectively, to try and keep the biodiversity alive and most importantly as much of the rainforest kept as safe as it can, rather than just carelessly Slash and Burning too much of it.
Facts for Conclusion
- Methane has 21 times more of an affect only Global Warming than Carbon Dioxide
- 15,000,000,000 trees are cut down each year and this needs to stop
- As of 2015 4,300 companies buy or sell products to or from Certified Rainforest Farms
The Ways of Farming
Arble : Crops
Pastoral : Animals
Mixed : Crops and Animals
Subsistence : Grown just for the farmer and family.
Commercial : Grown to sell
Intensive : High inputs if labour or capital usually small
Extensive : Low inputs of labour or capital
Sedentary : Permanently in one place
