Wasps - macro

Soybeans

Trucks waiting to dispatch their loads of soybeans at Usina Mato Grosso on the Santarém-Cuiabá Highway.

Mato Grosso soy, update

Another view of the Mato Grosso mill, where there's a constant coming and going of trucks unloading soybeans that are being harvested in this region right now. The beans are planted at the beginning of the rainy season, normally in January and February. Timing is perfect because now we're in the beginning of our dry season. Long sunny days with blue skies, guarantee a good harvest.

Mato Grosso soy, update

Another image of the Mato Grosso soy/rice mill located in Cipoal on the BR-163 Highway. Per earlier posts, it's my understanding that Cargill has leased this facility because their large sills in Santarém are full to the brim.

Mato Grosso soy, update

This image, plus the next two, were taken this morning as I headed down BR-163 to visit friends near Cipoal. We counted approximately 20 trucks waiting outside to get into the Mato Grosso Mill for unloading soybeans.

Lake Maria takes its toll, continued

Now I'll get to the point, why did we have to call a tow truck? After all, the only problem seemed to be a flat tire. The culprit in this story is that tire wrench you see in the image. We had a spare, but believe it or not, we couldn't get the flat tire off! Huff and puff, I got three of the four lugs loosened, but the fourth one wouldn't budge. The tire wrench that came with the Fiat isn't much more than a toy. I called Cleuson at the Bosque to help. Muscle didn't help. Then Cleuson went down the highway by bicycle to find a "professional" tire repairman. "Sorry, he's busy fixing a flat on that big tractor trailer". It was one of the soybean trucks! He probably got the flat at Lake Maria, just like I did. By this time my wife, Áurea is getting worried because she was already two hours late getting back to her medical clinic and she didn't relish the idea of spending the night in a swamp. She made the final decision, "I'm calling a tow truck." In about one hour the truck plowed into Lake Maria and scared the heck out of the driver when the front of the vehicle fell into that deeper hole. But in a bit the Fiat was secured on the flatbed of the truck and off we went to town. Áurea may have been pleased in finding a solution to the problem because she's had an emergency insurance policy on the car for nearly three years and it had never been used. It paid for itself today.

Harvest season for soy, continued

Another soybean field that has been harvested over the last few days. Notice the lone Brazil nut tree over to the left. It's prohibited to cut these trees because they are considered an important food resource for mankind in the Amazon. Could it be that this was the only such tree in this former forest? No way! You can be sure that most of them were bulldozed over and burned, along with the fauna that had nowhere to hide. Locals tell the story that one farmer on the Poço Branco side of this area downed 70 of these huge trees. I believe it because one can look into the far horizon without seeing one Brazil nut tree. Destruction of the Amazon forest at its best.

Harvest season for soy

The harvest of soybeans in this region is in full swing. I discovered this only three days ago when I was looking for an alternative route for getting back and forth to the Bosque, therefore avoiding the mud hole I've named Lake Maria. It's amazing how fast the crop disappears from the farmlands. The empty field shown in the attached image is one bordering the Bosque. I showed the growing crop of soybeans here only a few days ago. As I drove further southwest, all the other fields had also been harvested. Clean as a whistle, as the old saying goes. Mechanized agriculture at its best.

Lira Maia

My friend and neighbor at Bosque Santa Lúcia is Joaquim Lira Maia. As my readers may have deduced from previous posts, he's my neighbor because his land borders on the northern part of the Bosque. He's my friend because I've known him and his family since arriving in Santarém in 1979. They're from Cipoal, which is located on BR-163, the federal highway that connects Santarém to Cuiabá in the State of Mato Grosso. When I arrived that year, Maia was finishing up his university studies in Belém at the School of Agronomy. I got to know his family because I was working in public health and Cipoal had been selected as one of the first communities to participate in the "barefoot doctors" program, more appropriately called "atendente de saúde pública". The community selected Maia's sister, Fátima, as the person to be trained. She wasn't more than a kid at that time, finishing up her high school studies in Santarém because there wasn't one in Cipoal. The commute wasn't an easy task because not one inch of the highway was paved. It was Maia's other sister, Mariquinha, who told me about a farm down a road on the other side of the highway that was up for sale. I checked it out one day, liked what I saw and we bought it, to be paid for over the next six months. That was the beginning of what is Bosque Santa Lúcia today. Maia's parents and his many siblings lived a few hundred meters off the highway in in a small mud and wattle house. They were agriculture people in the best sense of the word. Everyone worked the land in a slash and burn fashion, including Maia. His nickname was "jato", which means jet. So called because he suffered a childhood paralysis that left him with a one leg that dragged behind the other. But that didn't slow him down. He moved about like a jet. He was also bestowed with high intelligence and a gift for speech, which eventually got him in politics. I don't remember all the offices he's held over the years, but I know that he was secretary of agriculture for this state of Pará, at least one term. He was also congressman for this state, maybe two terms. He was elected mayor of Santarém and the municipality for two terms and he's now a national congressman from Pará. As you can see from the attached picture, he's still a young man. As a rural extension agent said at a community meeting I attended in Cipoal, "no small stuff for a kid, who was out in the field hoeing corn and beans not long ago." I consider Lira Maia a friend too because I used to spend a lot of time with his mother and father when I first came to Santarém. They both smoked homemade pipes and I had been a pipe smoker for many years. We traded pipes, we traded tobacco and drank a lot of homegrown coffee in that little house with mud walls and a dirt floor. I never got to know Maia the way I got to know the rest of the family, but to this day we're invited to occasional family type affairs. He's always treated us with friendship and respect. It is an overstatement to say that politicians have their fans and enemies ... and certainly Maia is no different. There are people who hate him and what he stands for in his stance for development of the Amazon. He was the key figure in bringing soy and mechanized agriculture to the region. There people who will never forgive him for that deed. The world of politics seems to mandate that you kick the shit out of your opponents in any way you can. The higher up on the totem pole, the more you get kicked. Law of the jungle! I'm basically an environmentalist, but I believe in a rational management of development. In an interview with a BBC reporter from Vietnam a few days ago, I talked about that in great length. In another post, I'll present those views. Right now I'd like to get back to my tropical biodiversity of flora and fauna at Bosque Santa Lucia.

Cargill

Cargill is the multinational grains company that set up shop in a 20 million dollar port facility here in Santarem a few years ago. My neighbor at Bosque Santa Lucia, Lira Maia, was mayor of Santarem at that time. I don't know the details of how it all came about, but Cargill ended up with a very premium piece of land and port area in whatever bureaucratic transaction occurred. The environmentalists obviously see red when it's discussed. A pivoting judicial question that never gets settled is whether or not proper environmental impact studies were conducted. Many non-politically committed people also see red because they are rightfully in love with their city and the Amazon. One only needs to look at their music, verse and writings about this place to understand that they were pissed when they woke up one day to see a monstrous grain elevator crawling out into the Tapajos River, "f....... the sky", as someone put it. The roof of the depot building sported the name of the company, "Cargill". The letters were so big, they could be seen from anywhere, whether it be air, land or river. The battle was on ... and continues. A high level judge closes the place down from time to time; another higher level judge overturns the decision; the company continues activities; Greenpeace finds a golden icon in their effort to denounce deforestation of the Amazon; the company removes its name from the depot roof; and more recently the company agrees to adhere to check and balances of deforestation for planting soy to be monitored by the Nature Conservancy. The attached image is a picture I took of the Cargill grain elevators during a rain storm. More coming ...

Colors of Soybeans, continued

I took this picture of some soybean pods just before I got sprayed with a very strong insecticide. I figure that I'm now free of lice, ticks, fleas and all those things. I should have taken my dog, Lucca, with me. Just think, she missed a free treatment! I don't remember the regular month for harvesting soybeans, but I suspect it will be towards the end of June. The festivity is normally about the time the dry season sets in. I honestly don't know where Maia sells his harvest, but I would guess at Cargill. Coming up next.