jari at age 19 - Philip M. Fearnside - Inpa

corrals atop earth-fill hills. During thehigh-water period, these artificial hillsbecome small islands, each with an areaof 1200 m 2 • The earth-fill hills replacethe traditional "marombas" - raisedwooden platforms where the cattle arepenned during the flood season. The remainingmarombas at J ari will eventuallybe replaced by the earth-fill islands.The cowboy in charge of each island isprovided with a house built over thecorral. The houses have better sanitationand other facilities than most traditionalfloodplain residents enjoy. The cowboy'swife is responsible for making butterfrom some of the milk. J ari had six ofthe raised corrals as of April 1986 andplanned to have two more by the endof 1986.The earth-fill islandsinclude a fish culture scheme still in anexperimental phase. A hole is left in thecenter of each island, creating a pond.Excrement from the water buffalo in thecorral fertilizes the pond, where aquaticplants (known locally as "murure") serveas food for two species of forage fish(known locally as "tamuata" and "jijuna").These fish are eaten by the commercialspecies (pirarucu" (Arapaima gigas).Research on the fish culture schemehas been underway since 1983 in a cooperativearrangement with EMBRAPA.There is also a smallexperimental herd of 50 water buffaloin the terra firme (uplands) area nearSao Miguel. This operates under a cooperativeagreement with the Faculty ofAgrarian Sciences of Para (FCAP).Upland caule: Jari currentlyhas 2000 head of bovine cattle interra /irme, mostly near Sao Miguel. Thearea of pasture will expand by 3000 hato take advantage of installations, allowingthe total herd to be augmentedto 7000 head. J ari has a demand for 500-600 head/ month for meat supply. A herdof 35,000 bead would be needed tosupply this, including females kept formilk and cheese.The upland cattle herdis no longer being managed for on-sitereproduction. Heifers are bought andfattened. The remaining cows of goodquality continue to be bred, and theiroffspring will be bred, but the firm'swaning interest in the breeding phasemeans that this will fade out over a fewyears. Breeding would require more landand effort.Establishment of newinterplanted stands of pasture with Pinuscaribaea was discontinued in ca. 1982for a variety of reasons (Fearnside andRankin, 1985). The cattle have sinceTABLE VIIFINANCIAL BALANCE IN JARI'S SILVICULTURE SECTOR (1984/85)Receipts:PriceQuantity (US$/ ValuePulp species Market (103 m tons) m tons FOB) (103 US$)Gmelina arborea Export 66 267 17,622Domestic 16 331 5,296Pinus caribaea Export 48 249 11,952Domestic 42 256 10,752Eucalyptus deglupta Export 31 267 8,277Domestic 11 331 3,641214 57,540Production costs(exclusive of debt service) 104,790been removed from all of the previouslyestablished interplanted stands due tothe pine's advancing age.J ari's upland cattle pasturesare of the species Brachiaria humidicola,which was promoted throughoutthe Brazilian Amazon by EMBRAPAin the late 1970's. An increasing attack ofthe homopteran bug Deois incompleta(known locally as "cigarrinha") hassince led EMBRAPA to recommend An-.dropogon guianensis instead. The bugsare a serious pest on the Beh!m-BrasiliaHighway in Para and on the CuiaM­Santarem Highway in northern MatoGrosso, but have not yet become a problemat Jari. Jari's ranching departmentsays that its Brachigria humidicola pastureshave to be manually cleaned ofwoody second growth every year and replantedevery 4 years.Jari's Wood ShortageJ ari's mill uses 3000-3500 m tons/ day of chips for pulpingwhen operating at its 750 m tons/ daynominal capacity. Chips required forfirewood have so far been supplied entirelyfrom native forest. The balance betweenwood demands and the growth ofthe plantations is essential in evaluatingthe project's future.A rough calculation ofthe growth of the plantations can begained from the midpoint areas of thepresent complex of each species and ageclass (Table I). Using the midpoint ofLOSS IN SILVICULTURE SECfOR 47,250the yield range for each species (TableII) one can calculate the approximateamount of wood growth in the estate'splantations (Table III). In order to bringplantation growth and wood demandsinto balance the plantation area wouldhave to be expanded by 21.4%, assumingthe same present percentage of eachsilvicultural species and the present supplementof native wood.The wood balance overthe next few years will be critical becauseLudwig planted little in the lastyears of his tenure. The first treesplanted under the new administrationwill come on line in 1987. In 1985 thecompany was racing to obtain enoughwood to keep the mill from stopping.Measures included gleaning previouslyfelled areas for logs that could be usedfor firewood in the power plant and theearly harvest of stands. The mill wooddemand was lower than usual: forreasons unrelated to the shortage the pulpmill operated at below capacity for severalmonths, and then stopped operatingaltogether for one month duringwhich repairs were effected. 1 1 >The availability of pulpwoodover the 1986-1989 period can beroughly projected (Table VI) based onthe plantation areas and age classes(Table I) and the rotations and yieldmidpoints for the major species (TableII). Several optimistic assumptions aremade in the projection as estimates ofthe contributions of the species and ageclasses not included in Table II. 1 2 > Theprojection indicates that Jari will have11\JEROERWI JAN- FEB 1988, VOL. 13 N9 121