The day before yesterday, we got to go to a park on the northern edge of the Cuiaba region. There the land rises up in a stark, red rock escarpment and lush jungles. Looking back down we could see a patchwork of some cattle ranching and just a little bit of cropping. Most of the land that we could see was still in the forest and brush that a typical of the Cerrado around Cuiaba.
Here's a video of Jim Kleinschmit from IATP talking about the view and how it relates to our trip here to Brazil to understand the interaction of land-use change and biofuels policies.