Agriculture in Mazara Palani, Wat

Be careful or you might reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere by like 0.1%!

Then everyone will be sad...

Climax forests are shit. They aren't effective carbon sinks, they don't produce as much oxygen per acre, and they don't provide a good wildlife habitat. Life lives in young growth and on edges. Fuck all lives in the middle of an old growth forest.

Actually, preservation of the natural world. There is more incentive for the farmer to maintain polyculture in forest, than there is for the State... given that the farmer is making a profit off of it.

I'm confused -- you're advocating selling off parcels of, for example, the Amazon? The way I see it, if that was the case, you'd certainly have less illegal loggers; you'd just have way, way more legal loggers. I'm not quite sure what your argument is here.

Climax forest isn't good for oxygen emission because it is in equilibrium. It needs to be cut down and replanted every once in a while to promote oxygen/carbon dioxide turnover.

Legal loggers have a strong incentive to replant their plots post cutting in order to allow their businesses to continue, illegal loggers do not and usually run away after slashing and burning forest plots for underground cattle ranching or illegal forestry.

It is within the farmer's interests to maintain part of his forest intact (a larger portion), because it guarantees long-term maximization of profit. I expound my thoughts here, as my family owns large tracts of forests which we have not deforested.

MP, you seem to assume that all cattle ranching is illegal, and that privatization would mean a complete lack of illegal loggers. Someone would still be able to buy up vast tracts of the Amazon and deforest them for whatever reason, be it living space or cattle ranching -- the difference is that now no one can stop them.

The fact remains that even if a plot was owned by someone, that plot would still be susceptible to illegal logging because there's still no way to stop it. Just because there's a claim to land on a piece of paper doesn't mean that an illegal logger still couldn't just log there.

The mechanism stopping people from logging the land for cattle ranching is twofold:

1.) Cattle don't fare well against the parasites in MP.

2.) Clear cutting land will render it unproductive for future use. Land, being a finite good, will have higher long term profit if cultivated in the methods described in the post. Cattle ranching in MP is outright stupid since there are far better places in the NS world to raise cattle, with far cheaper land, livestock and feed costs.

3.) Illegal loggers can log. Landowners can shoot them. Government will look the other way.

Think in terms of resource efficiency. The most efficient thing to do to prevent clear cutting or cattle grazing is to use it for something else; ecotourism, growing specialized plants, ethnobotany, studying gorillas, hunting preserves. People tend to defend lands they have a use for. Low intensity land management. There are plenty of reasons that can be created for low intensity land use. This way you can give people jobs to shoot trespassers and call it something else. E.G. we need it for science. We need money from tourism, etc.

Hmm...next article, Tourism in MP?