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6105 Gateway Drive • Grand Forks, ND 701-746-0083 • 800-279-7492 • Hours: M-F 9-6 and Sat. 9-3
www.newvisiontruckaccessories.com FORDLANDIA • In 1926 Henry Ford set up the Ford Industrial Company of Brazil. He wanted to build a rubber plantation to provide rubber for his tires. Ford wanted not only to build the cars, but also to control all the resources it took to build the cars. In exchange for employing Brazilian workers, the government of Brazil gave him free use of 2.5 million acres of jungle taxfree for 50 years. • The community was dubbed Fordlandia. 4,000 workers cleared the land of the native hardwoods. Then they planted nearly half a million rubber trees on 7,000 acres. By 1936 the first rubber plants were ready to be tapped. Also by 1936, the hilly deforested slopes that had been cleared of their hardwood trees were so eroded that the soil ran down gullies and rainwater flooded the community. Then came the leaf blight which devastated the rubber plantation. • Ford abandoned Fordlandia and moved the project to a new site, ten times bigger than the old one. Called Belterra, the area was healthy and well drained. Ford ordered workers to clear the land and plant three million rubber trees. This time they planted a grafted hybrid designed to resist disease. The process of grafting and planting was extremely tedious. Workers
grew dissatisfied and left in droves. By 1941, Ford had only 2,700 of the 11,000 workers he needed. And then the leaf blight returned. Plagued by high costs, labor shortages, and blight, Belterra also ended in failure. • In 1945 Henry Ford's son sold the whole thing to the Brazilian government for a mere half a million dollars. Over $9 million had been pumped into the project over 19 years, and Ford had failed to produce enough rubber to make a pencil eraser.