The ostrich is the largest bird in the world. Ostriches cannot fly but they can run as fast as 50 kilometres per hour (30 miles per hour).
The Amazon - into the forest
The Amazon - into the forest A few years ago, a Brazilian agronomist spoke to a
correspondent of New Scientist‚ forcing the corespondent to
think a little differently. The Brazilian agronomist told a story,
imagining a different world history. What if the history of the
world, had been different, and the Renaissance, explosion of
scientific knowledge, and the agricultural revolution had taken
place in a tropical country rather than Europe? Suppose that the
Amazon was the breadbasket of the world, and that Amazonian
ecologists started to hand out unwanted advice to other countries
of the world, for instance, suggesting that places like the
prairies of Iowa were worthless for the purpose of agriculture?
What if the other countries said “we're not going to
listen‿? That’s what the agronomist says now,
“we’re not going to listen and we're going to develop
the Amazon‿. The question we're left with is could the
agronomist be right? As history has favoured the temperate regions,
could the future lie with the tropics? Could the Amazon end up like
Iowa one day? 21 SEPTEMBER 1996, P. 26-27
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