Rainforest farmer
(Dilemma writing style)
Carlos was sitting in his small house looking across his fields. It was raining. It rained a lot where he lived next to the rainforest. He looked at his plants, the maize and beans he had planted with what little money he had. He had tried his best. He had come to Amazonia from a far city because he had been told that the rainforest was a place full of lush tree and if lush trees could grow, anything could grow.
But his crops did not grow. Well, they did grow at first. But it had been hard work cutting down the trees and burning the branches and leaves so there was somewhere to plant his crops. His whole family had helped. They had all worked so hard. He had planted his seeds in the ashes of the burned trees and the rain had come and the seeds had sprouted. But so many thinks flew out of the rainforest and ate his crops during the day, and he suspected just as many came out at night. Nevertheless, he had managed to get a reasonable crop the first year. It was not too bad the second year either. But then he seemed to get less and less. He could not afford the fertiliser the nearby farmers told him he needed. He said he had been told it was all lush, and the other farmers just laughed, saying that they couldn't make anything grow either because they were all poor and so they couldn't afford the fertiliser. One of them told Carlos why. "The rain comes and washes any goodness through the soil. The rainforest trees have rots that spread out to catch the nourishment before it is lost, but our crops do not have roots like that, so the nourishment is lost before they grow. They can only catch the nourishment when you burn the trees, and then only for a couple of years."
So the trees had fooled him! No, the advertisements in his far-off city has fooled him. They had lied to him. He was angry. But what could he do? He could try cutting down a bit more forest. That might do for another couple of years. Or he could take his family back to the city and return to the slum he came from. It was not much of a choice. He couldn't see how he could win whatever he did.
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