Controlling Nature 2 housing, hotels and casinos, office towers, refining, petroleum and gas
exploration, and agriculture.
Well connected politically, Ludwig paid three million dollars for
a tract of Brazilian land equivalent to the size of Connecticut plus
half of Rhode Island. Located along the banks of the Jari River deep
within Brazil’s rain forest, Ludwig’s proposed “Jari project” would be
five hundred miles downriver from Fordlandia, an earlier and like-
wise ambitious project undertaken to produce latex for making tires.
Launched by another Michigander, Henry Ford, “Fordlandia” was
eventually sold for a fraction of its cost and was then abandoned twenty
years later.
Ludwig showed no interest in Ford’s failure, including how blight
and parasites had plagued its rubber trees. His brilliance was extracting
immense wealth, be it from governments, war, natural resources, labor,
or the environment. His engineer’s mind, market acuity, and supreme
confidence in his own judgments had made him wealthy. Subordinates
who disagreed with his decisions were easily replaced.
Enthusiasm for the Jari project soared when one of Ludwig’s chemi-
cal engineers identified in Africa a fast-growing tropical tree, Gmelina
arborea (known simply as gmelina). Ludwig instantly foresaw domina-
tion of the global market for hardwood and pulp products. The potential
for riches had parallels with America’s earlier petroleum barons. Saying
that he “always wanted to plant trees like rows of corn,” Ludwig set
about reordering the environment by importing massive tractors dubbed
“jungle crushers” to clear 25 , acres of rain forest.
Once the land had been cleared, and workers began planting gmelina
seedlings in neat, straight rows, his first of many missteps soon became
evident. In removing the native trees and undergrowth, the jungle crush-
ers had stripped away the thin layer of top soil, exposing the subsoil to
bake in the hot sun, and then harden. The land became so compacted
that the seedlings’ roots could not penetrate the soil.
Over the next decade and a half, the mistakes compounded. Plan-
tations of rice were doused so heavily with pesticides that insect popula-
tions grew immune. More recurrent and heavier applications killed off
bird and fish populations. As had happened with Fordlandia, planting
the same species of trees so close together had removed natural barriers
against pests, requiring trees to be sprayed more frequently.