One Dream That Grew on the Amazon

MONTE DOURADO, Brazil —  Next to Daniel K. Ludwig’s dreams, Henry Ford’s vision of Amazon rubber seems rather puny.

In 1967, 40 years after Ford broke ground for Fordlandia, Ludwig, an American industrialist, began developing the Jari Project--a tree farm larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined on the north bank of the Amazon, 250 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean port of Belem.

Like Ford, Ludwig brought in scientists and engineers. He built several large American-style communities, a first-class hospital, good schools, 5,600 miles of roads, a 40-mile-long railroad and an airstrip. Sections were cut from the forest, and thousands of fast-growing Burmese gmelina trees and Caribbean pine were planted. Most spectacular of all, he had a complete 17-story pulp and paper mill constructed on two barges in Japan and towed 15,500 miles around the Cape of Good Hope to Brazil.

But Ludwig’s trees did not take to the poor Amazon soil, and Brazil, which was moving out of a generation of military rule, was becoming hostile to foreign business. So in 1982, after losing as much as two-thirds of his estimated $1-billion investment, Ludwig sold out. He died last year in Chicago at 94.

There the parallels with Ford end.

In Brazilian hands, Jari, now known as the Monte Dourado Forest Co., a division of the Rio de Janeiro-based Caiami Group, is prospering. It is home to 60,000 people and provides direct jobs for 5,500. The population is fed by a herd of 12,000 water buffalo and 2,600 pigs. A fleet of 14 tugboats, 29 barges and two diesel locomotives helps ship 330,000 tons of wood pulp all over the world every year.

“Ludwig’s idea was basically right,” said Sergio Coutinho, a Jari biologist who also works for a Brazilian government research agency. “His failure was that he tried to get results too fast and that he didn’t try to use Brazilian knowledge built up over the years. He not only shipped in all the equipment from outside, he used American scientists to plan the project.”

The Brazilians have shifted to eucalyptus, a tree far better suited to the Amazon, and they have developed ways to enrich the fragile soil. And, according to Coutinho, nearly 100% of Brazilian trees cut for paper are now grown on similar sustainable plantations. “I think that the Amazon is going to get developed whether we like it or not,” he said. “From our experience here, the model of large, intensive development seems to be the way forward.”