From Geoff Russell
Kate Ravilious says that soya plantations “are rapidly expanding thanks to soya’s popularity as a food and suitability as a biofuel” (21 April, p 12). This is far from the whole story. The Worldwatch Institute reports that 75 per cent of soy is fed to animals, and identifies the particular soy companies involved in Amazon destruction.
If there is a boom in soya’s popularity as a food, it is not what is driving the expansion of soybean cultivation. Rather, it is the 200 million Brazilians trying to eat like North Americans, and a bunch of Europeans wanting cheap feedlot meat. The blame for the destruction of the Amazon needs to be placed on the right shoulders – not on human tofu eaters, who could be well catered for by a small portion of the global soybean production.
St. Morris, South Australia
