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Agribusiness Boom Brings Change to the Amazon

By Martin Kaste
Published January 24, 2005 at 12:00 AM EST
Highway 163 was cut through the jungle in the 1970s to connect the Amazon to the rest of Brazil, but the job wasn't completed. Under pressure from agribusiness, the government plans to pave the remaining 600 miles north of Guarantã do Norte.
Geoff Gaudreault, NPR
Highway 163 was cut through the jungle in the 1970s to connect the Amazon to the rest of Brazil, but the job wasn't completed. Under pressure from agribusiness, the government plans to pave the remaining 600 miles north of Guarantã do Norte.

Brazil is in the midst of an agribusiness boom. Vast farms of 10,000 or 20,000 acres are churning out soybeans and other commodities for the world market. That's good news for the country's balance of payments, but it's also turning millions of acres of Amazon rainforest into a tropical version of Kansas.

NPR's Martin Kaste has the first of two reports.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Martin Kaste
Martin Kaste is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk. He covers law enforcement and privacy. He has been focused on police and use of force since before the 2014 protests in Ferguson, and that coverage led to the creation of NPR's Criminal Justice Collaborative.
See stories by Martin Kaste