Chinese destroy the Amazon

Today soybeans are eating up larger and larger chunks of the Amazon, leading to a 40 percent jump in deforestation last year, to nearly 10,000 square miles.

...experts are unanimous in warning that as soybean farming continues to spread through the adjacent southern Amazon states of Mato Grosso and Para, the threat to the Amazon ecological system is likely to worsen in the next few years....

Economists say that the main spur to the soybean boom is the emergence of a middle class in China, much of whose newly disposable income has been spent on a richer, more varied diet. During the past decade, China has been transformed from a net exporter of soybeans to the world's largest importer in some years of whole soybeans as well as oil and meal byproducts.

From Relentless Foe of the Amazon Jungle: Soybeans, By LARRY ROHTER.