Brazil "soy king" sees Amazon as food solution

More of the Amazon rain forest should be cut down to make way for farmland to help ease the global food crisis, the governor of a big Brazilian farming state was quoted on Friday as saying.

Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso state and Brazil's largest soy producer, was quoted in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper as defending deforestation.

"With the worsening of the global food crisis, the time is coming when it will be inevitable to discuss whether we preserve the environment or produce more food. There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking down more trees," said Maggi, a farming pioneer in the vast western state who is widely known as the "King of Soy."

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