In the village of Tarapacá, a group of women are working to strike the perfect balance between using the natural resources of the Amazon rainforest for income and protecting this…
La Guajira, COLOMBIA — On Oct. 9, Colombia’s first wind farm, Jepírachi, officially reached its end of life after running for almost two decades in Uribia, in the northeastern region…
Oil palm is highly suited to cultivation in the ecological and climatic conditions of the tropics and its cultivation in South America has expanded steadily over the last three decades.…
The cultivation of soy and maize has brought additional benefits to the farm economy in Mato Grosso because it has increased the supply and affordability of feed rations for livestock…
Last month, the U.S. agreed to lift some sanctions on Venezuela in exchange for a roadmap to presidential elections, tentatively scheduled for the second half of next year. The deal…
PUERTO GUZMÁN, Putumayo, Colombia — Duberney López Martinéz was only 13 when he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2003. “Since I can remember, my family has…
A team of international researchers recently discovered sprawling cold-water coral reefs in the deep waters around the Galápagos Islands. They found the corals after identifying marine areas with high wave…
Indigenous Shuar communities and local mayors in southern Ecuador have demanded immediate help in light of the “imminent” potential collapse of a massive dam holding mining waste, set in the…
ORELLANA, Ecuador — "There's a pool here," says Ermel Chávez, a representative of the Amazon Defense Front in Ecuador. Chávez plucks a long branch from a tree, crouches down, and…
AYACUCHO, Peru — From the sky, cleared areas periodically interrupted the green grasslands and steep mountains of the Asháninka Communal Reserve and Otishi National Park in Peru. Wide expanses of…
The Amazon - spread over half of South America and filled with thousands of unique species and billions of trees – is being ravaged by global demand for beef, soy…
Protests are arising in South American communities as Google, Microsoft and other tech giants build water-hungry computer data centers in increasingly drought-besieged nations, including Uruguay and Chile.
CERRO DE PASCO, Peru — The open-cast crater seems ready to swallow the city whole. Mud-brick houses with corrugated iron roofs teeter on the edge of the massive Raúl Rojas…
The soy/maize supply chain is dependent on the existence of privately owned logistical facilities that are essential for receiving, drying and storing soy and feed grains post-harvest. Without silos, the…
The Amazon Rainforest is being hit by three kinds of drought at once: an “eastern El Niño,” a “central El Niño” and an “Atlantic dipole.”
A strange fire on the top of a unique geological formation in Venezuela has baffled scientists, park guards and local community leaders, who have never seen a fire in the…
Reforestation pledges have promised to replant more than 12 million hectares (30 million acres) in the coming decade.
Because soybeans are annuals, soybean prices can vary sharply over relatively short periods of time. Farmers can choose to expand soy cultivation when prices are ‘good’, which eventually leads to…
After a scorching heat wave fueled a month of wildfires blazing across a wild jaguar haven, the rains of Oct. 24 brought welcome relief to Brazil’s northern Pantanal wetlands. Now,…
A plan to bring Mennonite farmers to Suriname is drawing backlash from environmental groups and Indigenous communities, who are concerned about the widespread deforestation that could result from large-scale agriculture.…
The most important production system in the Pan Amazon when measured by GDP is the cultivation of annual crops: particularly soy, but also maize, rice, sorghum, wheat and cotton. In…
Beef production technology in all other Amazonian regions lags Brazil except for Bolivia, which has largely adopted the Brazilian approach to beef production. Bolivian producers can be classified into two…
The state of Amazonas, the largest in Brazil, recorded 3,181 fires from Oct. 1-23, an all-time record for this month, according to monitoring by Brazil’s space agency, INPE.
The veto sparked outrage among Brazil’s powerful rural lobby, which vowed to reject Lula’s changes to the bill, although any decision made in Congress can be challenged in the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month, the leaders of eight countries in South America signed the Belém Declaration, billed as a landmark step towards saving the Amazon Rainforest. But it was criticized for…
Coffee was not a crop traditionally grown by the Paiter Suruí people, an Indigenous community in the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Territory, deep in the Brazilian Amazon. The Suruí’s first…
Does planting trees bring back the animals? Around the world, people are working to restore forests, either by planting trees or allowing the flora to return naturally. But as the…
Earlier this month Paraguay approved new regulations meant to improve the country’s carbon credit market and attract more international interest. But the regulations have also raised concerns about land ownership…
Brazil is both a massive producer and consumer of beef. Domestic consumption has expanded steadily year on year with slight variations linked to periodic recessions, but most of the recent…
NOVA XAVANTINA, Brazil — This past July, 15 Indigenous women made the thousand-mile journey from their home of Rolim de Moura, in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Rondônia, east to…
