Overview of Social and Environmental Issues
São Paulo State contains some of the last vestiges of the Atlantic Rainforest - only 7% of the original Atlantic Rainforest remains today. Much of the destruction of these forests was and is due to sugar cane production. In addition to cutting down the forests, sugar cane production leads to hectares and hectares of land being burned every year. After sugar cane has exhausted the land, cattle ranchers move in, thus causing significant erosion and even greater land degradation. As the land is degraded, springs dry up, soil washes away, agricultural production falls, and plant and animal species disappear.

São Paulo State is one of the richest regions of Brazil. Although this is the case, the richest 20% of Brazil's population has 64% of Brazil's riches, while the poorest 20% only has 2% of the country's riches. While traveling through the region, you will see large farms of thousands of hectares, but you will also see farmers pushing their small plots of land to their limits to make a living. The result is poor health and poor land for the poorest citizens of the region. The Brazilian government is trying to help by creating laws forcing land owners to reforest their lands, which in the end, will restore the land's health and benefit people. However, the government has not supplied any monetary or informational assistance, thus making it even more difficult on small land holders.

Our Response
We have initiated a long-term program to address low agricultural production, rural poverty, and environmental destruction.  Historically, the greatest impediment to sustainable land management was a lack of local capacity to solve agricultural and environmental problems.  Therefore, a significant portion of this initiative will be aimed at developing local capacity in agroforestry techniques that address issues endemic to Brazil such as overgrazing and the deforestation of waterways.

May 2010
Unlike many of the other TREES programs, we start the calendar year with the rainy season and transplanting seedlings. We had a great season with more than 10 times the number of seedlings from 2009. Of those who received seeds, over 70 percent followed through with their plans and transplanted their seedlings to the field. That is an excellent return on our investment in training and capacity building. We have already purchased seeds for our upcoming nursery season and we have even started distributing some seeds to people in the northeast and to people with irrigation in the south. Our new training video and expanded demonstration site have been excellent resources for our training workshops.

February 2010
Danielle Weiss, Project Manager for Planeterra, visited our projects in mid-February. We are very proud of our program and it was wonderful to get such positive feedback from Danielle. You can check out her blog postings at:

http://www.community.planeterra.org/profiles/blogs/planeterra-plants-half-a
http://www.community.planeterra.org/profiles/blogs/heading-out-to-the-brazilian
http://www.community.planeterra.org/profiles/blogs/volunteer-opportunities-at-our

Thanks to Fernanda Peixoto and Paulo Polvora for taking time to show Danielle around.

2009
Read about our all of our activities in 2009 here (pdf).

2008
Read about our activities in 2008 here (pdf).