Word: belterra
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...leaf rot. When Ford sold out for a nominal price to the Brazilian government, the Instituto Agronômico took over where he left off. Today Dr. Camargo has turned Fordlandia into a plantation for growing hardwood trees and cacao, and breeding water buffalo. But 90 miles downstream at Belterra, he has 2,225,000 healthy rubber trees growing...
They are very special rubber trees, with trunks of one variety grafted on wild rubber roots, and boughs of still another variety grafted on the trunks. Each tree should produce many times as much rubber as a wild tree. Within a few years Belterra may produce, nearly a third as much rubber as the whole Amazon valley did at its peak...
President Vargas certainly ought to have known that. In his 10,000 miles, which had carried him up the Amazon basin from Belem to Manaus and beyond, he had rubber-necked at a few of an estimated 300,000,000 untapped wild rubber trees, visited Fordlandia and Belterra, where Henry Ford has a $20,000,000 investment in some 2,500,000 acres. On his return the President had some pretty fancy plans to announce...
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