§ Mr. HancockTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much of the world's rainforests has been destroyed in each of the last 10 years to provide land purely to provide food for animals; and how much grain for humans this land could provide per year. [156966]
Mr. Gareth ThomasA recent Food and Agriculture Organisation study sampled 10 per cent. of the world's tropical forests in 1980, 1990 and 2000. The key changes noted were a loss of 'closed forest' (i.e. rain forest) amounting to 70–80 million hectares per decade, and a gain in "other land cover", primarily cultivation and pastures, of an almost identical area.
It is not possible to state the proportion of forest destroyed to provide food for animals, since deforested land often has a sequence of changing uses. For example, in South America land cleared for cattle ranching is often later used for soy bean cultivation. In Africa, land cleared for small-scale landholdings is often used for both cultivation and raising livestock.
It is not possible to say how much grain for humans deforested land could provide per year owing to huge variations in land fertility.