Brazil, already in the midst of the soybean cycle, is regressing back to the colonial sugarcane cycle, showing the behavior of a compulsion to be the country of the future as described by Stefan Zweig in his 1942 book. Brazil is bringing back one of its original and damaging colonial extractive cycles, the sugarcane plantation, which devastated the most important forest on the continent, taking away species that will never be seen again, plants that may well not be used again. Looking at the economic aspect, a few "families" are again to be benefited with the profits of exports, forgetting the large majority of the population which was kept marginalized, exploited and under employed.

The legacy of sugarcane is the extermination of 95% of the Atlantic Forest. This forest was the biggest concentration of plant and animal species on the planet, much more important than the Amazon Forest. The Atlantic forest contains many different biomes (ecosystems) in the same forest - compositions like the Caatinga (White forest), the coastal forest, the mangroves, the Restinga (vegetation in the sandy coastal plain), and the highland biomes like the Mantiqueira mountains and the Serra do Mar.

The extermination of the Atlantic forest continues to the present time. The green desert takes its place, forming dry rivers, desertification, salinization and erosion, altering the climate and destroying the habitat of many avian, mammal and plant species in its damaging march forward.