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soil degradation

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• Cecilia Vaisman

  Vanishing Homelands

  Sustainable Colonization

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  Cecilia Vaisman

  Vanishing Homelands

  Sustainable Colonization

  In Brazil, a peasant cooperative has planted native crops using methods designed to preserve the delicate forest soils. But the farmers have little formal education, and even less experience managing a business.

  Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of poor peasants have streamed into the Brazilian Amazon in a desperate search for farmland.

  Many of them arrive only to find that rainforest soils cannot sustain the kinds of crops they knew back home. So they end up in a vicious cycle – slashing and burning new areas of forest year after year.

  Now, a small group of farmers living in the most devastated region of the Amazon is trying an alternative. Some say it may become a model to stop the destruction of the jungle.

  Narration is by Edward James Olmos, who hosted a series of 13 half-hour Vanishing Homelands specials.

  Date

  July 1992

  Outlets

  NPR

  Tags

  Themes: Economy, Environment

  Regions: South America

  Media: Audio

  Other Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman

  Other Tags: cooperatives, rainforest, soil degradation, Brazil