Hi everyone 
I just want to rant a bit about misinformations I hear from “educational” and “intellectual” sectors in my country regarding agriculture and the Green Revolution.
For those of you who don't know, Brazil is s breadbasket, along with our neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Brazil alone produces enough food for over 1 billion people which has lead to a prosperous agro business in the country, speaking from a family background, my maternal grandma was a dairy farmer and she still keeps a small garden to plant veggies on her house. My late paternal grandpa was was a seed salesman and he owned a Silo at one point and my dad is an agronomist (though his company works with forestry). Most cities in the Southern Countryside are agricultural focused, similar to the American Midwest, the Centre-West region of Brazil is another breadbasket however their focus is on cattle (though soybean production increasing). The Agro is incredibly professionalized and Brazil has produces industrialized Agro derived products like Soybean oils, processed coffee and biofuels.
That being said it is no secret the Brazilian left loathes the Agricultural system, but what makes me particularly angry is how much they misinform or straight up lie about making use of “educational channels”.
For instance I've noticed on Youtube channels like Brasil Escola and other Youtube “Professors/Teachers” will rant about how the Green Revolution is bad because of Rural Exodus and the horror, PEOPLE MAKING MONEY OUT OF SELLING CROPS 
The worst part is that these “teachers” make their videos to prepare High School Seniors for the ENEM tests (the ENEM is kind of like the American SAT). The ENEM itself is extremely politicized as you need to write an essay (redação) about a given subject. The subject changes every year. For instance the 2022 Redação Subject was “Challenges facing the traditional peoples of Brazil”, that is the indigenous and quilombolas. Last year the subject was “Challenges to face the invisibility of caretaking work made by women”. In 2019 it was “democratization of cinema access in Brazil”, and so on.
Scrolling down the comments of the Youtube Teachercels channels I keep finding the same nonsensical claim:
I always read this nonsense online when leftoids talk about the Agro Business. That number is false.
O censo agropecuário de 2017, o mais recente, também desmentiu os números superestimados da produção familiar, e revelou que as propriedades assim enquadradas respondiam por 23% do valor total da produção dos estabelecimentos agropecuários.
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The real number is around 23%
I remember the commies at /r/brasil soying about the MST (Movimento dos sem Terra) or “Landless Movement” a leftist group dedicated to private property occupation. They talked about the MST as id they singlehandedly fed the entire country.
Now, without mentioning their claims are completely bollocks, it seems they would rather disrupt the entire AGRO and place it under new forests or subsistence farming. Excluding the fact this would kill dozens of millions abroad and starve hundreds of millions by disrupting food supplies, it would cause starvation in Brazil as even the demonized AGRO crops (soybeans, maize, wheat) and cattle go beyond export.
Quando se fala de soja, ela está presente em vários outros alimentos, no óleo, no suíno, no bovino, no peixe. Ela é base da ração para esse tipo de rebanho. Você não se alimenta de soja de uma maneira geral, mas indiretamente ela entra na alimentação. > Com o milho é a mesma coisa. O frango é um milho com asa: 73% do frango é milho”, diz o pesquisador da Embrapa.
Corn and soy are used to produce oils and they feed the livestock which is consumed by Brazilians and foreigners alike. Not to mention derivate products like noodles and processed stuff. There's also coffee and cotton, the first is present in almost every Brazilian Household, the latter is the source for clothing.
These São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro teachercels and their leftoid “students” have an extremely romantic, idealized vision of subsistence agriculture to the point of being close to Noble Savage myths. That being said, President Lula is a strange man on this regard.
Lula has close relationships with MST leaders and allowed for this anti agro propaganda to thrive inside our Educational System (it's not only Youtube channels, regular teachers and they commie unions are the same), however when it comes to actual policy he's all business as usual. He always nominates centre-right agriculture ministers from Agro dominated states, he has meetings with Agro producers and businessmen and promotes our exports to China while trying to secure Fertilizer imports from Russia (also a reason why Bolsonaro was friendly with Russians despite the Ukraine debacle). It could be argued he pays lip service to MSTcels.
Anyways, I think this one of the most damaging and dangerous types of virtue signaling and feel good politics, I hope they never get their way but right now is kind of worrying how much PR this sort of nonsensical callous misinformation campaign currently has.
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Great, it means we'll sell more soybeans and soy based products to Britain
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South America will have "Degrowth" imposed on it and "Re-Wild" for heckin' carbon capture.
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Goes to show how ill thought these “environmentalists” plans are. I understand stopping subsidies for European agriculture for economic reasons, but phasing out our agriculture because “save le forests and indigenous peoples” will cause mass starvation not only here but in Asia and Europe as well.
The EU is shooting themselves on the foot trying to impose their ridiculous high environment standards to our agriculture during the Mercosul-EU trade deal negotiations, even Lula call them out, not just Bolsonaro. By doing so they're pushing South America towards China and Russia, most of Brazil's agricultural exports go there and the chinese don't give a flying frick about environmental regulations. I don't like neither China nor Russia but realpolitik wise is hard to maintain good relations with Euros while they offer almost nothing in return.
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It's totally delusional since the "Amazon Rainforest" was an engineered ecology by the Meso-Americans before smallpox killed them all off.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/
It is not "wild". Humans remain the greatest keystone species on earth and I feel far more thoughtful management needs to take place other than "lol let le mother GAIA take the wheel". Nature is r-slurred and needs to brought to heel by Man. I always go back to the water catchment projects in Saudi Arabia that radically transformed the entire countryside for the better.
!nooticers
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I read an interesting theory (though is debatable) that the great dying of indians in the Americas during the 16th century might have triggered the Little Ice Age as the forests expanded over their territories capturing high amounts of Carbon Dioxide.
1491 by Charles Mann had a fantastic chapter on pre columbian Amazon, the recounts of Orellana's expedition for instance described how the whole Basin was populated, that there were hundreds of villages with thousands of people each, presumably millions of indians lived in the Pre Columbian Amazon.
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I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the topic, but my understanding is that there isn't much solid basis to any populations estimates pre Columbus.
I read 1491 a really long time ago, but if I recall Mann gives a number like 80-100 million right? Most other estimates Ive seen from othe sources are around 10-20 million
I read this book a few years ago and it lead to me feeling very skeptical about Mann and lead to me rethinking the whole narrative between disease and American colonization
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Mann's high estimates were of 100 million, but the most accepted one seems to be around 50 million inhabitants which is held by most scholars nowadays. The Amazon in particular possesses many artificial moulds and geoglyphes, the 10-20 million estimate is at the very low end and were made in the early-mid 20th century, almost all recent estimates based on new archeological findings are 50 million+
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You are likely more read on this topic so I'll take your word for it. But I gotta say my main takeaway from reading both books was that the reliability of any estimate of pre Columbus populations is dubious
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And you're right, is very hard to come up with a realistic number. Mann is a journ*list but he doesn't shy away from that, 1491 is basically a compilation of what mainstream scholarship currently thinks about pre columbian Americas and they could eventually be wrong about some stuff.
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The amazon was all floating farms akin to Aztez chinampas iirc. Constant circulation of water in tributary streams surrounding the soil to flush it with fertility.
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I thought chinampas were sort of a myth. That they probably fished and had regular farms and the floating stuff was probably a kind of garden, because no one has been able to viably reproduce what was claimed about them.
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I only dislike your government. Russian literature, art, mathematics and tea culture are great
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b-but I am the government
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Thank you for your fertilizer Vladimir Vladimirovich!
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I don't care if people starve. I unironically value the rainforest more than their lives.
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