In Brazil, researchers from Kansas State University, University of Texas at Austin and Michigan State University have statistically linked the loss of forest area as the indirect effect of changing pastureland into space for soybean and biofuel crops in counties bordering the Amazon. By reducing soybean production by 10 percent in these pasture areas could decrease deforestation in heavily forested counties of the Brazilian Amazon by almost 26,000 square kilometers — or 40 percent, the main researcher said.
