In 1998 WORLDwrite Brazil exchange participants made their first film. To mark the 10th anniversary the charity digitised their work. Many of the lessons learned and discussion raised remains remarkably pertinent 10 years on. This interview with a Brazilian agronomist sums up the film’s message : “Imagine that the history of the world had been different. Imagine that the renaissance, the explosion of scientific knowledge and the agricultural revolution has not taken place in Europe but in one of the tropical countries. We’d visit the vast prairies of the United States, like you visit the Amazon, and tell you that there was no chance of ever building farms there, that the winters were too hard and that there were not enough nutrients in the soil to support regular harvesting. We’d tell you that your only hope was to learn from the native Indians. You should leave the prairies to grass and each year just hunt a number of buffalo guided by strict ecological principles. We’d tell you that to try anything different would destroy the ecosystem for ever. Yes, if history had been a little bit different, that’s how it would have turned out. We’d have been providing the stupid advice.” For more please visit WORLDwrite’s Brazil website.
