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Future Perfect

Can we raise better beef?

Future Perfect

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Tech News, News

4.5622 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Beef cattle take a huge toll on the environment. In Brazil, a huge chunk of greenhouse gas emissions comes from ranching alone. And a California-sized chunk of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down to provide land for these cattle to graze on. But one man, living on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, has a potential solution. In a series of small pilot projects run in his own small town, he’s demonstrated that he can work with ranchers to make their land healthier and more sustainable, so they don’t have to slash and burn more forest. He’s also shown that, by making the land greener and the cows healthier, he can dramatically reduce emissions from ranching. Further listening and reading:  Christina Selby’s story about Vando Telles’s company can be found at Scientific American. Vox video has an in-depth explainer on deforestation in the Amazon and on the invasion of indigenous land in Brazil. Vox video also has an explainer on why eating beef speeds up climate change. Vox’s Umair Irfan traveled to Brazil last year to report on deforestation and climate change. We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to [email protected].  Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week. This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals. Featuring: Christina Selby (@Christina Selby), freelance science reporter Host: Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox  More to explore: Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat. Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Follow Us: Vox.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:25.3

In 2017, a reporter named Christina Selby flew out to Alta Floresta, a small Brazilian town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.

0:35.2

You get off the plane and it's hot and sweaty and humid and all the birds are singing

0:39.9

and you can kind of feel that heat and the humidity of the Amazon right there.

0:44.5

A few decades ago, Christina would have seen an area thick with trees as she drove out of the

0:50.1

township. She was near the largest rainforest on Earth, what people actually call the lungs of the planet,

0:56.9

because it recycles so much CO2 into oxygen.

1:00.6

But now...

1:01.8

It's dry, it's dusty, it's brown,

1:05.2

and there are huge patches of flat earth.

1:10.8

That's because the rainforest trees were cleared away so people could raise catalog. huge patches of flat earth.

1:15.5

That's because the rainforest trees were cleared away so people could raise cattle on the land.

1:19.8

It's a tragedy that's played out along huge tracts of the Amazon.

1:26.7

In Brazil alone, 450,000 square kilometers of rainforest have been cleared for beef.

1:31.4

That's a patch of rainforest, the size of California, gone.

...

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