Mato Grosso

The current standard for developing foreign agriculture land is what American farmers have done in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

Cleared Amazon forest in the central Brazil state of Mato Grosso shows up as beige rectangles over the span of fourteen years.

The strong Brazilian currency and a clogged transport system are conspiring against many Mato Grosso farmers.

The sun sets behind a parched tree in Mato Grosso, midwestern Brazil.

CNA expects the rust to be most threatening in Mato Grosso, Brazil's largest soy-producing state.

Even so, Mr Minc has already picked a fight with Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso and one of the world's largest soya farmers.

"Mato Grosso was our new horizon, " Favaro says. "It's a state of opportunity. "

He is proud to have turned Mato Grosso from a malarial zone into an agricultural powerhouse.

Mato Grosso means thick forests, and the name was once apt.

THIS month Jennifer Balch will head into the Amazon rainforest of Mato Grosso state, in Brazil.

In May this year the former environment secretary of Mato Grosso was arrested over an illegal-logging scam.

At left, a visitor aboard a boat along the Rio das Mortes, or River of the Dead, in Mato Grosso.

After Mr Maggi became governor in 2003, Mato Grosso's rate of deforestation accelerated markedly.

In Mato Grosso, 700 square miles of rain forest was stripped in the last five months of 2007 alone.

Palm trees emerge from the morning mist in the Pantanal near Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

The laboratory confirmed cases were reported from the three states of Goias, Distrito Federal and Mato Grosso do Sol.

A vaquero on a cattle ranch in Mato Grosso.

Much of the destruction has been in Mato Grosso state, the centre of soya farming in Brazil.

Mechanized agriculture for crops such as soy took over 1. 3 million acres in Mato Grosso just between 2001 and 2004.