The trans-Amazon highway BR-163 provides a lifeline for the states of Mato Grosso and Para. Soya, timber, meat and rice are transported to the Amazon port of Santarem via this road. About half the seventeen hundred kilometer road is still dirt track which is impassable during the rainy season, leading the Brazilian government to announce plans to tarmac the whole length of the highway. This could spell disaster for the Amazon rainforest as economic progress and wide scale environmental destruction will go hand-in-hand if the BR-163 is developed. The new road will open up huge areas ripe for turning ancient rainforest into giant soya plantations. Opponents of the plan say the Federal Government must insist on stringent safeguards and point to other highway developments, which have caused disastrous social and environmental consequences.