Venezuela, slash-and-burn farming

Around the vast lake formed by the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam—Guri, in Bolivar state, southeastern Venezuela—small farmers grow cassava and maize on patches of land cleared by burning. Slash-and-burn is an itinerant form of agriculture, in which fire is used to clear land to grow crops for sale or for subsistence. After two or three years, the land is abandoned because it has become infertile. Slash-and-burn is seen as the prime cause of deforestation in Latin America. Although almost half the region is still covered by natural forest, deforestation is proceeding rapidly. About 18.5 million acres, or 7.5 million hectacres, (0.77 percent) of the forest disappears each year, and over the last thirty years almost 470 million acres, or 190 million hectares, (the equivalent of the whole of Mexico) have been destroyed. Central America and Mexico have the highest deforestation rate in the world: 1.6 percent per year.