pstarr wrote:But what about Central America, where you live Ibon? Isn't it a bit overpopulated and somewhat of a chokepoint for population movement?
Plantagenet wrote:These relict indigenous groups will barely notice when collapse occurs in the rest of the world.
ennui2 wrote:Plantagenet wrote:These relict indigenous groups will barely notice when collapse occurs in the rest of the world.
You could make the same argument about any rural population.
Over the last four decades, Brazil has changed from being an importer to become the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. According to the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA), during this period the country has tripled its land productivity, becoming “an agribusiness giant”. Today, the sector accounts for 23% of GDP, 27% of jobs and 44% of Brazilian exports.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), Brazil is the third largest global producer of chickens and has the second largest cattle herd in the world, with more than 211 million head. The country is also the leading producer and exporter of coffee, sugar, sugarcane ethanol and orange juice. Furthermore, it occupies the top position in external sales of the soya complex (meal, oil and grain). The 21st century witnessed the industry’s rapid expansion. According to the latest projections published by MAPA, grain production should expand from 100 million metric tons in 2000 to 193.8 million metric tons this year. The total area planted - currently 67 million hectares - will increase to 75 million hectares by 2023, according to the Ministry. Soya beans alone will account for nearly 7 million hectares. As a result, it is expected that over the next ten years grain production will increase by 20%.
The fact that the sector has experienced economies of scale has contributed to this evolution. Crops are now planted in large holdings, farmers have become professional and the agricultural equipment industry has expanded. "New production techniques were adopted, such as direct drilling with crop rotation, allowing the producer to harvest two crops per year," says Ivan Wedekin, director general of the Brazilian Commodities Exchange.
According to the Brazilian Agricultural Research Institute (Embrapa), inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides were responsible for almost 70% of the growth of agricultural production over recent decades.
https://globalconnections.hsbc.com/braz ... ness-giant
Agriculture is Chile’s second largest source of exports, and is expected to grow rapidly in 2012 - 2016. Therefore, an efficient agro-food industry is a top priority in Chile. Today, the food industry represents 25% of Chile’s economy and employs more than 1 million people. It is expected that in 2030, the food processing industry will account for one third of the country’s economy. The fruit, wine, poultry, beef, pork and dairy industries offer large export potential.
http://chile.um.dk/da/~/media/Chile/Fin ... nology.pdf
In Argentina, factory farms replacing grass-fed beef
Today, much of the country’s famous grasslands have been turned over to crops. Beef consumption and exports are way down. And lest you think it’s because overall meat consumption is down, irony would have it that Argentina is now the world’s No. 1 exporter of soymeal, No. 2 of corn, and No. 3 of soybeans, increasingly used as animal feed in China, where meat-eating is through the roof.
Images of cows on pasture are still common in Argentina’s guidebooks and on postcards and butcher shop windows, but cattle production now largely relies on the feedlot.
http://grist.org/sustainable-food/in-ar ... -fed-beef/
Brazil: How could so much go so wrong?
President Dilma Rousseff faces impeachment threats
Economy limps along in recession
Corruption probes snare politicians and business execs
It would be bad enough if Brazil’s embattled president, Dilma Rousseff, just had a recession and a plummeting currency to deal with. But in a perfect storm, she also has two corruption investigations, a fractious Congress and impeachment threats on her plate.
Inflation is running at nearly 10 percent, there is a soaring budget deficit and the value of the real has fallen by 32 percent. Average wages are declining and unemployment in Brazil’s six major metropolitan regions was 7.6 percent in September after years of almost full employment. And the bad news keeps on coming: In the first nine months of this year, 657,761 jobs were lost, and 1.5 million jobs are expected to disappear from Brazil’s formal economy in 2015.
The government's economic statistics agency IBGE said in a recent report that 197,000 people have lost jobs since August 2014 in the industrial sector, while 120,000 people were fired from construction sector jobs in the same period. Has Brazil’s real estate bubble burst? When adjusted for inflation, residential real estate prices in Brazil’s top 20 cities fell for the first time since 2008, adding to the country’s economic woes.
Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Brazil’s credit rating to junk status, and Fitch Ratings downgraded Brazil to BBB-, which places it at just a notch above junk. Corruption investigations into both Petrobras, the state-run oil company, and the construction industry already have damaged investor confidence. Dozens of members of Congress are under investigation and important corporate leaders have been jailed.
The swiftness of Brazil’s fall from grace has given many analysts pause.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article42134757.html
Brazil's embattled President Dilma Rousseff
A woman shouts slogans and bangs on a pan during an anti-government protest demanding the impeachment of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff
In this Aug.21, 2015 file photo, Eduardo Cunha, president of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, attends a meeting with union workers in Sao Paulo. Brazil's Supreme Court seized $2.45 million in Swiss accounts allegedly belonging to Cunha, a powerful political figure who can largely determine whether widely sought impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff begin.
Over eighty indigenous tribes were destroyed between 1900 and 1957, and of a population of over one million during this period eighty per cent had been killed through disease, violent enslavement or murder.[3] The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognises indigenous peoples' right to pursue their traditional ways of life and to the permanent and exclusive possession of their "traditional lands", which are demarcated as Indigenous Territories.[4] In practice, however, Brazil's indigenous people still face a number of external threats and challenges to their continued existence and cultural heritage.
Since the 1980s there has been a boom in the exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest for mining, logging and cattle ranching, posing a severe threat to the region's indigenous population. Settlers illegally encroaching on indigenous land continue to destroy the environment necessary for indigenous peoples' traditional ways of life, provoke violent confrontations and spread disease.[5] Peoples such as the Akuntsu and Kanoê have been brought to the brink of extinction within the last three decades.
Two Guarani teenagers are feared dead amidst a wave of attacks on indigenous communities in west-central Brazil.
The teenagers went missing earlier this month during an attack on their community, known as Mbarakay, by ranchers’ gunmen. The gunmen beat up several community members, tore out women’s hair, and shot at the Indians.
The Guarani reported that a police squad stationed nearby was aware the violence was unfolding, but failed to intervene. Similar reports are emerging from other communities under attack.
Whilst the ranchers earn huge profits from sugar cane, corn, soya and cattle on the Guarani’s ancestral land, the Indians are forced to live in appalling conditions in roadside camps and overcrowded reserves, where malnutrition, disease and suicide are rife.
Their leaders, who are attempting to reoccupy their ancestral territories known as 'tekohá', are being assassinated, one by one.
The Brazilian constitution stipulates that all indigenous lands should have been recognized by 1993, but thousands of Guarani are still waiting even for small parts of their territory to be returned to them. Politicians are now debating a constitutional amendment which, if passed, would set indigenous rights back decades and drastically worsen the Guarani’s plight.
http://delgadodolphin.net/2015/10/living-on-the-land-brazilian-tribes-fight-with-farmers/
On Aug. 9, while looking for his child by the river, Semião Vilhalva, 24, got shot in his face. He is a part of the ethnic group Guarani-Kaiowá, an indigenous tribe from Brazil. Mr. Vilhalva was one of the leaders of the movement that tries to retake the Indian lands in the city of Antônio João, where at least five farms are being occupied and reclaimed as part of indigenous lands.
The conflict between farmers and the tribe has been going on for quite some time. According to anthropological reports, the Guarani-Kaiowá tribe has been living in the disputed area since 1950. Due to the agrarian growth system implemented by the government at that time, land belonging to the tribe was taken and their presence was denied so the government could expel them from the land.
http://www.planetexperts.com/category/i ... us-rights/
Plantagenet wrote:the few remaining indigenous tribes in Africa or the Brazilian rain forest or the farmers in the high Andes make minimal use of fossil fuels.
SeaGypsy wrote:More, it is a response to threat. You live in the middle of one of the great megalopolis of the world, wall to wall humanity, which informs your view in exactly the opposite way to my experiences living in places like Cape York, Arnhem Land, the MacDonnell ranges, where nature is still abundant & at mega scale & extreme geographic isolation, where hunter gathering & simple agriculture can still easily provide sustenance. You can barely believe such places exist, you will probably try to tell me they are hallucinations I had. To your view a western desert Arrernde man is a pending invadee, a doomed relic of a bygone era. To him, you are part of this bizarre white conglomerate building concrete cancer & choking on your own detritus, who could never in a million years inhabit the great deserts. You both see each other as illusory & temporary, but the Arrernde has been where he is for 2000 generations.
ennui2 wrote: The question was whether self-reliant rural people like in the Andes would remain undisturbed.....
This whole idea of kicking back in some... permaculture paradise munching on grapes and avocados and watching everyone else die without banging down your door is a childish fantasy.
Plantagenet wrote:They are remote and life is hard there.
ennui2 wrote:This whole idea of kicking back in the woods or some permaculture paradise munching on grapes and avocados and watching everyone else die without banging down your door is a childish fantasy.
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