But Carter believes that cattle ranchers can help slow down Amazonian deforestation. The trick, he argues, is to build a market that favors conservation. Four years ago he founded his own "special-ops unit," the nonprofit Aliança da Terra, with this mission: to provide ranchers and farmers who agree to preserve and rehabilitate their land a network of buyers willing to pay premium prices for their products.

Before we flew off in Carter's four-seat Cessna for a weeklong, 1,300-mile tour of his many projects in Mato Grosso, we stopped at Aliança headquarters. In 2004, Carter started the nonprofit with $30,000 of his own money and $270,000 in startup grants from U.S.-based Blue Moon Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Now it has 18 employees and an annual budget of $200,000, which will triple next year.

Here's how Aliança works: Carter partnered with Daniel Nepstad, a former senior scientist at Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Center and one of the world's foremost experts on the Amazon, and IPAM, the Amazonian Environmental Research Institute, to form a registry of Brazilian ranchers and farmers who are committed to good land stewardship. Scientists and Aliança employees geo-reference a property, gathering stats and information on wildlife, fire hazards, erosion, riparian zones, and deforestation. Then the landowner signs a Recuperation Management Plan, which is put into an auditing system that tracks the landowner's compliance on a yearly basis.

"Aliança is a group of producers who understand what producers' problems are," says Ana Luisa Da Riva, a São Paulo–based operations officer for the International Finance Corporation (a member of the World Bank Group). "Its work is recognized by all sectors: government, the private sector, producers, and NGOs."

Currently, Aliança has more than 160 properties in its system, totaling 700,000 head of cattle and nearly five million acres. Within months, ABCZ, the world's largest cattle organization, with 16,000 members, and the Xavante Indian reservation, a 412,500-acre sprawl of degraded forest that's home to 700 Indians, will come on board. But the crown jewel in the system is Fazenda Santo Antonio do Paraíso.

"Lutz's property is the psychological rallying flag," says Carter. "He's maintained it intact for 70 years. He's the Brazilian symbol of a good land steward."

The big unknown for Aliança is whether the market rewards stewardship. The largest importers of Brazilian beef—Russia, Hong Kong, Egypt, and Venezuela—are hardly countries that have made sustainability a top priority. In markets where it is, like the European Union, Brazilian beef exports are highly restricted. In the U.S., fresh Brazilian beef imports aren't allowed because of concerns over foot-and-mouth disease.

"If the European Union is demanding higher social and environmental performance, then that is probably the way the rest of the market will be going," says Nepstad. "There are signs that even China will begin imposing environmental standards."

But can the market change quickly enough? According to Adrian Forsyth, the vice president for programs at Blue Moon Fund, the U.S. nonprofit that gave Carter his seed money, "The combined pressure of agriculture, biofuels, and rapid climate change is going to ultimately overwhelm the region."

Maybe that's why Carter is in such a hurry.