... planting crops. Poor farmers may chop down a small area (usually a few acres) and burn the trunks in a process known as 'slash and burn' agriculture. Cattle pastures often replace the rainforests in order to grow beef for the world market. Another type of deforestation is known as commercial logging. This is the cutting down of trees in order to sell off as timber and pulp. This process uses heavy machinery, such as bulldozers and road graders etc to remove trees and this is detrimental to the forest and plant successions overall. Competitive global marketing drives the need for money in economically challenged tropical countries. At national level, governments sell logging concessions to raise money for projects or to pay international debt. For example, Brazil had an international debt of $159 billion in 1995 on which it must make payments each year. Logging companies seek to harvest forest and make ...

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