The protection of the forest also helps the cultivation of soybeans in Brazil. This comes from a new study in the journal “world development” appeared.
In the study, a team led by Avery Kohn of Tufts University in Boston analyzed the vegetation value of soybean production using two complementary approaches: What income do soybean farmers lose by destroying forests and other ecosystems? What are the revenues generated by maintaining these ecosystems?
According to the study, extreme heat reduced the soybean crop in an area of 35.8 million hectares at an average of about US$100 per hectare per year. Overall, the sector is estimated to cost an estimated $3.55 billion.
The protection of the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado savannah can prevent rising temperatures. This allows assessment of the remaining healthy ecosystems. As calculated by the team, the magnitude of this value depends largely on the amount of land that has already been converted into arable land in a given location. When there are only a few healthy forests, it is more economical to leave them where they are: deforestation destroys more crops through local warming than arable land yields yields.
This does not currently apply to all regions of Brazil. And as climate change progresses, the future value of a healthy ecosystem will increase exponentially—according to the team’s calculations, by 25 to 95 percent.
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