INTRODUCTION 
_ Brazil is a vast country, covering more than 314 
million square miles, an area approximately 10 
percent greater than that of continental United 
States exclusive of Alaska. It is shaped roughly 
like a triangle, with its broad base near the Equator 
and its apex extending to 34 degrees south latitude. 
More than 90 percent lies in the tropics. From 
east to west it is 2,700 miles wide and from north 
to south 2.600 miles. 
prising 21 States, 5 territories, and a Federal district 
. (fig. 1). Its 71 million people, 54 percent rural, 
are a mixture of Europeans, Africans, and American 
Indians, and are chiefly concentrated in the south 
Brazil is a republic, com- 
and east fairly close to the coast. Portuguese is 
the official language. Fifty percent of the population 
is literate. The total labor force in 1962 is esti- 
mated at 27 million, with about half in agriculture 
and only one-eighth in service industries. 
Timber, minerals, and waterpower exist in 
abundance in Brazil’s vast but these 
resources have barely been touched. The Amazon 
Basin contains the largest reserve of tropical forest 
in the world. The mineral resources, to a large 
extent undeveloped, make Brazil potentially one of 
the world’s richest nations. Its waterpower poten- 
tial is estimated at 80 million kilowatts, about 24% 
interior, 
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) THE 
In a general way, Brazil may be characterized by 
three broad land classifications: the lowlands of the 
Amazon Basin and the Paraguay-Parand River 
system, the narrow coastal plains along the Atlantic 
Ocean, and the Brazilian Highlands occupying the 
roughly triangular interior of the country. The 
lowlands and coastal plains, generally less than 600 
feet above sea level, almost encircle the Brazilian 
Highlands (fig. 2). The highlands embrace a vast 
area of rolling hills and plateaus, rising in the east 
to a chain of rough mountains that slope abruptly 
to the narrow plain along the southeastern Atlantic 
coast. A small part of the country along the north 
border lies in the Guiana Highlands. 
FORESTS AND FOREST INDUSTRIES OF BRAZIL 
times that already developed in the United States. 
Only 3 percent of the land is cultivated, yet it 
grows half the world’s coffee and substantial quan- 
tities of sugarcane, cotton, manioc, rice, corn, beans, 
and black pepper. 
than does any other country except the United 
States. 
quantities of vegetable oils, fiber, and fuel. 
Brazil produces more oranges 
Its 600 varieties of palms provide large 
And 
large numbers of livestock are marketed. 
According to official Brazilian statistics, pro- 
ductive forests’ cover 1,454,800 square miles or 
931 million acres, 44 percent of the total land area 
of Brazil and more than half the forest area of 
South America. Only a small percentage of this 
forest area is being exploited, mostly in the Parana 
pine forests of the south. Brazil is a net exporter of 
structural timber, but it still must import woodpulp 
and paper to take care of nearly one-third of its 
paper consumption. The most common use of 
wood from its forests is for fuel in its households 
and industries. 
Although forest activities now provide somewhat 
less than 5 percent of national income, the undevel- 
oped character of most of central Brazil and the 
Basin offers an almost 
Amazon unparalleled 
opportunity for well-planned, vigorous expansion. 
LAND 
The Amazon Lowlands 
The Amazon, greatest of all rivers, drains an area 
as large as all of Europe and carries a volume of 
water estimated to be 14 times that of the Mississippi 
and 17 times that of the Nile. It has a remarkably 
low gradient from its mouth through Brazil. Al- 
though elevations have never been precisely meas- 
ured, reasonable estimates put the river at less than 
300 feet above sea level at a point roughly 2,000 
miles from the Atlantic. 
upstream Oceangoing 
! Forest land that is now producing or capable of producing 
usable crops of wood other than fuelwood. 
