I believe that the launching of ScienceBlogs Brazil will attract some international audience, and as Portuguese is not yet a widely spoken language, a brief introduction in English may be a good action.
First things first, Geofagos means Geophages. All of the authors of Geofagos are Soil Scientists and firmly believe that the soil is the key to the proper functioning of the environment and of human society. The name of this blog was largely intended as an homage to Charles Darwin’s last book, The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms, with observations on their habits, in which he beatifully described how earthworms, geophagous animals, slowly build the organic matter rich upper horizon of soils from temperate regions. Earthworms, along with termites, play an outstanding role in maintaining the health and quality of soils from tropical regions, especially the very deep Oxisols, known to us as Latosols.
Brazil has recently received international attention because of its many environmental and social problems, but we are also known for our impressive tropical agriculture (bio)technology. There is no doubt that agriculture has, in many instances, increased the environmental crisis in which we live, but agricultural technology advances have also saved millions of lives from this terrible disease, famine. We believe that agriculture’s negative impact to the natural world can be greatly avoided by the knowledge and utilization of appropriate agronomic techniques. That’s what we want, spread that knowledge.
We are very happy and excited by the opportunity to be part of the ScienceBlogs outstanding group of bloggers.