Dutch Farmers Eye Fertile Amazon Land

Frustrated by lack of space at home and exasperated by curbs on European agriculture, Dutch farmers have angered environmentalists here and sparked off a major dispute by turning their eyes to virgin land in the Amazon.

Enticed by a chance to start afresh and the offer of cheap land, hundreds of Dutch farmers have shown interest in moving to a new, 190,000-acre project of cleared land on the fringe of the Amazon rain forest, according to Willem Helmink of the Dutch NMA management consulting firm involved in the project.

Environment organizations claim the Ipiranga project threatens the forest and want the government to intervene and halt migration to the area.

Helmink denies the claim and said developing the area is far better than ripping out the rain forest.

(In Brazil, ecologists say projects such as this one in the heart of the cerrado , a term for the central Brazilian savannas now becoming an important agricultural region, help to preserve the rain forest).

The project, some 600 miles northwest of the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, is part of the 390,000-acre Novo Eldorado clearance and development program started in 1978.

Farmers are being offered 220-acre parcels of land at just $130 per acre. This compares to prices of between $4,800 and $9,600 per acre for arable land in the densely populated Netherlands.

“We want these farmers to realize they have a responsibility in the destruction of the Amazon and should not go,” Herman Verhagen of the Dutch environmental pressure group Milieu Defensie said.

“Although it is not pure rain forest being cleared, it is a buffer zone on the edge of the jungle and will open up access to virgin forest,” he added.

Novo Eldorado is run by the Brazilian-registered company Eldorado, which is managed by West German Bernd Wunderlich, a major shareholder.

Soybean growing has taken over vast areas of Brazil and Wunderlich said he is upset by criticism of ecologists because Eldorado seeks to avoid what he calls “disastrous monoculture.”

“We are revolted by the criticism because we consider that ours is an ecological project,” he said.

Rather than planting soybeans exclusively, farmers in the project are planting a mix of soy, rubber and urucum, a natural coloring agent.

Asked to comment on the claim by Dutch environmentalists that the project opened up access to the rain forest, a leading Brazil forestry expert, Mauro Victor, told Reuters in Sao Paulo: “It is just the opposite. . . . You are saving the rain forest.”

Ecologists in Brazil say it is far better to put the cerrado in central Mato Grosso under the plow than to cut down jungle, as has been done in some other areas to make room for farmers.

The argument has reached the ears of the Dutch government, prompting urgent talks between the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment and a series of written parliamentary questions from virtually all political parties.

“We do not like to have nature disturbed wherever it is, but we cannot simply stop emigration, so we are discussing exactly what we can do at the moment,” said Farm Ministry spokeswoman Jolanda van Makkelenberg.

Tropical rain forest expert Nicholas de Graaf at the Dutch agricultural university in Wageningen said experience in the north Amazonian country of Suriname had shown land of the type being offered to the Dutch farmers was difficult to farm, but by no means impossible.

He also noted that opening up such transitional areas was far less damaging to the environment than destroying the rain forest itself.

“The land has to be expensively re-conditioned, using large quantities of calcium and phosphorous, but once that is done it can become very productive,” he said.

“I believe they are trying to attract European farmers because of their knowledge of mechanized farming techniques. We have found that in these areas the difference between success and failure often depends on making the best use of this expensive equipment,” he added.