Growing demand for soybeans threatens Amazon rainforest
“Some 3,000 years ago, farmers in eastern China domesticated the soybean. In 1765, the first soybeans were planted in North America. Today the soybean occupies more US cropland than wheat. And in Brazil, where it spread even more rapidly, the soybean is invading the Amazon rainforest,” writes Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, in a December commentary.