 speculators, known as grileiros. These armed land squatters unlawfully clear land for soybean farms and lumber operations and usually obtain land titles by devious and violent means. Soybean cultivation in particular has expanded because of the growing worldwide demand for biofuels (Brazil is the largest producer of soybean-based biodiesel of any country). In 2004 the Brazilian government signed decrees to create thousands of square miles of land preserves in the areas where longtime residents had been susceptible to attacks by grileiros. Although the preserved land was put under government control, disputes among grileiros and peasants living in the rainforest have escalated into the early 21st century.
Corporate farming and agroforestry operations such as Fordlandia, Belterra, and Jari in eastern Brazil and Tournavista in Peru have had little success, because of poor soil fertility; the Jari enterprise, for example, was taken over by a consortium of Brazilian investors and the government in 1982. Transnational corporations investing in livestock operations, especially in southern Pará and Mato Grosso, included Volkswagen AG; Swift-Eckrich, Inc.; King Ranch, Inc.; and Liquigas Italiana. All subsequently terminated their activities.
Mining and energy
The exploitation of the enormously rich mineral complex of the Serra dos Carajás area west of the town of Marabá on the Tocantins River has been highly profitable, but it has also had harmful effects on the environment. This site, one of the world’s largest and richest iron ore deposits, also produces gold, copper, nickel, manganese, tin, and bauxite. The million-acre concession is run by Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD; now known as Vale); initially, it was a partnership between private capital and the federal government, but it was privatized in 1997. Vale’s plans for the local smelting of the iron ore in the 2000s required the clearing of thousands of acres of forest annually to provide charcoal for producing pig iron. A rail line connects the Carajás development with the Atlantic coast.
Gold mining reached a feverish pitch in the 1980s, stimulated by high world prices of gold. At the height of the Amazon “gold rush,” as many as a half million transient miners (garimpeireos) came equipped with picks, shovels, and sluice boxes to search for the mineral in the alluvial deposits of the Tocantins valley at Serra Pelada. Brazil’s annual production peaked in 1987 but declined thereafter. Large amounts of the mercury used to extract the gold were released into rivers and caused the fish, which are so important in the local diet, to become unsafe to eat. Moreover, since the 1990s mercury contamination has grown among Amazonian peoples, especially those groups that are more isolated and consume large amounts of fish. On the Madeira River, teams operating from rafts pump up from the riverbed auriferous sediments, which have to be subjected to a treatment similar to that used in gold mining. Bauxite mining, both at Carajás and on the Trombetas River north of the Amazon, requires the use of large settling ponds to trap effluents.
The energy requirements of both the Carajás development and the city of Belém are met by the giant Tucuruí hydroelectric plant on the Tocantins River, one of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world. A more modest hydroelectric facility on a small river north of Manaus supplies that city with power. A growing sensitivity to the harmful consequences for both human beings and the environment due to the construction of large dams has caused several ambitious projects to be placed on hold.
The principal oil developments within Amazonia have taken place in the Oriente regions of the Andean countries. Oil pipelines originate from districts in both Colombia (the upper Putumayo) and Ecuador (Agrio Lake), as well as northeastern Peru, and end at export terminals on the Pacific coast. Within the Brazilian and Bolivian portions of the basin, developments have been of minimal consequence.