nd type of subsistence agriculture is what the Rainforest Information Center identifies as farming by shifted cultivators. In fact, the RIC suggests that over half of tropical rainforest loss is due to shifted cultivators. These are farmers who have been forced (shifted) off of their own land by the forces of development (such as mining or large scale ranching). Their only alternative for survival is to develop a small farmstead by cutting and burning the rainforest. Commercial Agricultural Development is the third major cause of deforestation. This type of agricultural is usually based on large land holdings by a few individuals or by the government. Cattle ranching, to produce cheaper beef for developed nations is often cited as a prime example of how this type of agriculture harms tropical rainforests. In literature provided at the 1998 International Educators Rainforest Workshop in Peru, the demand for beef was said to have accounted for 72% of the deforestation in Brazil in the 1970s. Incidentally, many rainforest activists have pointed out that much of the beef raised on these ranches makes it way into American fast-food hamburgers, a cause for consumer introspection on our part. Costa Rica has in many respects done an admirable job of rainforest remains but how much of it has been converted to pasture land. In Peninsular Malaysia, extensive areas of lowland rainforest have been transformed to rubber and oil palm plantations.The manufacturing of illegal drugs would probably be the last thing most of us would associate with the rainforest destruction. Information relating to this problem was also presented at the International Educators Rainforest Workshop. In Peru, nearly 2 million acres of rainforest (10% of the total destruction) have been lost to make room for the coca plants from which cocaine is produced. In Columbia, the income from cocaine production outpaces that provided by coffee exports. An offshoot of thi...
