Source: Cool Earth
The use of certain types of biofuel and animal feed could lower the need for the production of soy meal - and could therefore reduce pressure on endangered rainforests, it has been claimed.
According to an article on the Engineer, using wheat in order to make bioethanol and animal feed could help reduce rainforest destruction as currently, the soy meal used in some types of animal feed require the clearing of almost 20 million hectares of land and most of this destruction takes place in regions of South America."The high protein animal feed produced by refining wheat will reduce these soy imports from South America. This, in turn, will alleviate pressures on deforestation arising from the continuing expansion of soy production in Brazil, Argentina and several other South American countries," the article went on to explain.
Use for industry is one of the main causes of rainforest deforestation and as well as being cleared for growing animal feed, cattle is raised in large areas of the Amazon for use in the global beef industry.
Logging firms also clear large regions in the rainforests.