Conservation and Agricultural Economics

Abstract

Where the soil is fertile and the climate good, almost all tropical forest has been lost. However, fertile soil and good climate are not intrinsic traits. Those descriptors mean that a plant or animal of use to humans can be profitably grown there. The earth's tropical forests were once about 40% rain forest and 60% dry fbrest. Today, the dry forest is essentially obliterated by agriculture and anthropogenic fires, while we still anguish over the evercincreasing loss of rain forest. Where dry forest once stood is where tropical humanity grows cotton, corn, rice, peanuts, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, cows, and horses in high-yield lowland fields and pastures. Whep genetic engineering gives us crop plants and animals that thrive in the various tropical rain forest habitats, it is "goodbye, rain forest." The power to finally obliterate the wildlands that have always been an integral part of our intellectual and economic lives has finally appeared and is undergoing intense development.