Brazil has gone from farming virtually no soybeans, to being the world’s largest exporter in the last four decades. During that time, millions of acres – estimated at 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest – were cleared for timber and grazing.
Now, under international pressure for better conservation, Brazilian agriculture plans to increase its crop yields using existing cleared land, more sustainably.
Owen Roberts is a faculty member in the Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications program at the University of Illinois. As an agricultural journalist, he is the past president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists and a lifetime achievement award recipient from the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation. His programs and research papers have been recognized nationally and internationally through awards from the Journal of Applied Communications, the National Agri-Marketing Association, the Association for Communications Excellence, and others.
