. The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: the Americas. Agricultural Colonization Policies and Deforestation in Amazonia. Figure The limits of Amazonian vegetation Soiiire: Daly and Prince (1989) Brazil Most early deforestation in Brazil resulted from agricultural expansion outside Amazonia, particularly in the south and southeast. For instance, before the coffee boom started in the mid-18th century. Sao Paulo was 82 per cent forested, but by 1973 only per cent of the forest remained. Similarly, at the end of the 1940s, almost 90 per cent of the northern region of Parana state was
. The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: the Americas. Agricultural Colonization Policies and Deforestation in Amazonia. Figure The limits of Amazonian vegetation Soiiire: Daly and Prince (1989) Brazil Most early deforestation in Brazil resulted from agricultural expansion outside Amazonia, particularly in the south and southeast. For instance, before the coffee boom started in the mid-18th century. Sao Paulo was 82 per cent forested, but by 1973 only per cent of the forest remained. Similarly, at the end of the 1940s, almost 90 per cent of the northern region of Parana state was covered in forests. This area is now one of Brazil's most important agricultural regions and only two per cent of it remains under forest (Mueller. 1991). Until the late 1960s, agriculture expanded 'spontaneously'. The main government action to stimulate the process before that time was improvement of the transportation system. However, recent expansion in the Brazilian Amazonia has been greatly influenced by social policies. These policies reflect an approach to development in recent decades that has tended to favour city dwellers and has led to a highly unequal distribution of benefits (Mueller. 1992). Since 1968. the ruling elites and those with powerful economic interests have received numerous advan- tages. Modernisation of agricultural methods, without redistri- bution of land, has meant that a growing number of people have been expelled from the main farming areas in the centre-south of the country. Many of these migrants moved to the large urban industrial centres, but a considerable number went to the agri- cultural frontier which had, by then, reached the Amazonian rain forest. Other people, from the poverty-stricken north-east of Brazil, joined the migrants from the rural areas of the centre- south and together they were responsible for a major onslaught on the Amazonian forests. Both Brazil's corporate sector and government agencies have embarked upon major Amazonia
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