“Until now, agribusiness and the Brazilian government have claimed that they cannot monitor the entire supply chain, nor distinguish the legal from the illegal deforestation,” said Raoni Rajão, a professor at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and the lead author of The Rotten Apples of Brazil’s Agribusiness. “Not anymore. We used freely available maps and data to reveal the specific farmers and ranchers clearing forests to produce soy and beef ultimately destined for Europe. Now, Brazil has the information it needs to take swift and decisive action against these rule-breakers to ensure that its exports are deforestation-free. Calling the situation hopeless is no longer an excuse.”
The 12 researchers from Brazil, Germany and the United States who wrote the review developed very difficult software to analyze 815,000 individual rural households to assess where the relevant illegal deforestation with soybean and meat production is taking place and how much of those products are successful in the EU. The article also assesses greenhouse fuel emissions from deforestation in a similar way to exports of soybeans and beef, highlighting the day-to-day jobs shared by foreign buyers.
The one in trade
The conclusions of the article come at a time of transformation in the history of the Amazon basin, the maximum of which is in the national territory of Brazil. Led by President Jair Bolsonaro, who came to force in January 2019, the new administration has encouraged forest logging in personal property and public lands, defying brazil’s forest code law and the soybean moratorium agreement, which prohibits forest logging for soybean production. The government has also dismantled a series of environmental protections designed to prevent illegal deforestation in the conservation and land of indigenous peoples, fervent protectors of the country’s forests.
International buyers of Brazilian agricultural products have long feared that products contaminated by deforestation may succeed in their countries. EU leaders have also braided the Brazilian government, reinforcing calls for a boycott of Brazilian products in reaction to the wildfires that ravaged the country in August 2019.
“By going through the effects of political signals that encourage forest logging, mainly by land grabbing, Brazil’s forests are at breaking point,” said Professor Britaldo Soares-Filho, also co-author of UFMG. “It is imperative that Europe use its market strength and purchasing force to help with this tragic dismantling of Brazil’s environmental protection, which has implications for the global climate, other local people and the country’s valuable ecosystem services. With this research, the Manufacturers in Brussels policy, however, have the data they want to assess the scale of the challenge in Brazil’s soybean and beef sectors. It’s time for them to act.”
The European Union has presented a plan to establish policies prohibiting the importation of products from illegal deforestation, and is also negotiating a lucrative industrial agreement with Mercosur, a bloc of South American countries that includes Brazil. Although the agreement is under expanding scrutiny in Europe, with calls for additional negotiations to raise protections for forests and rights, the EU’s relations with Brazil position it in a position to help the country end illegal deforestation. The evidence presented in the report indicates where the efforts are headed.
“At present, the implementation of its own forest cover legislation in Brazil is not strong enough to meet the EU’s strict environmental criteria for commercial spouses,” said Dr Felipe Nunes of UFMG. “But if Brazil takes its industry ambitions seriously, it can marry the EU to use its own to have tools, such as CAR (the country’s online environmental record) to end illegal deforestation related to the soybean and beef chains of origin. Brazil already has the means. All that is needed is political will.”
Contaminated soybeans and infected meat
The article reveals that manufacturers of 45% of rural households in the Amazon and 48% of rural households in Cerrado that obtain soybeans and meat for export do not meet the deforestation limits set out in the Brazilian Forest Code. Of 53,000 soybean homes in either region, 20% grew soybeans on deforested land after 2008; The authors estimate that some of this soybean produced on newly illegally deforested land.
About 41%, or 13.6 million metric tons, of EU soybean imports come from Brazil each year. About 69% come from the Amazon and Closed regions. According to the study, about two million tonnes of soybeans grown in homes due to illegal deforestation would possibly have recovered one of the EU’s markets each year during the period of investigation, of which 500,000 arrived here from the Amazon. In maximum cases, the newly cleared area is not used for soybean cultivation to comply with moratorium rules. But that hasn’t stopped soybean farms from illegally clearing their land for pastures and other crops.
When it comes to beef, the EU imports around 189,000 metric tons according to the year. The authors found that out of a total of 4.1 million heads sold to slaughterhouses, at least 500,000 heads came from homes that may have been illegally deforested. This represents 2% of the meat produced in the Amazon and 13% in Cerrado. But the biggest challenge lies in oblique cattle suppliers obtaining oxen for inconsistent feeds and not being monitored through giant slaughterhouses or the government. In analyzing livestock flows between ranches, the test estimates that about 60% of all slaughtered heads may have been potentially infected by illegal deforestation (44% in the Amazon and 66% in Closed) at some point in the source chain.
Brazil is the world’s largest manufacturer of soybeans, followed by the United States and Argentina. The test shows that soybean production, mainly used to feed meat and dairy cattle, is booming across the country. Production has more than quadrupled over the past two decades and is expected to increase through another third in the next 10 years, with exports expanding to 42%.
Pork manufacturers in the EU, the world’s largest exporter of red meat, have Brazilian soybeans, which is also a key element in the nutrition of chickens and other animals. The growing global demand for red meat from Asia and other regions has led to higher production, leading to increased demand for soybeans. This boom in demand for soybeans has hit the Cerrado region hard. Known for its biodiversity, the world’s largest tropical savannah has already lost some of its local vegetation.
Europe’s ambitions for deforestation
The European Union has a world leader in proposing public and personal efforts to make certain deforestation-free imports of beef, soybeans, palm, wood and other products known to endanger tropical forests. These efforts, as well as a food policy initiative to reduce long-distance shipment of feed or agricultural products, are related to the European Green Agreement.
There are calls within the EU to Brazil’s soybean imports; The proposals advise loading the harvest from geographically closest producers, such as the United States, or even expanding production at the borders of the European Union. This technique is derived from the farm-to-board strategy for sustainable food, a key detail of the European Green Agreement, which particularly targets carbon emissions from food production.
Brazil to lead
Researchers say Brazil could expand a transparent web-based formula that uses public data and strategies presented in its review to track manufacturers who illegally protect forests from their properties. The authors recommend that this technique be preferable to personal formulas recently contemplated in the EU, which would require corporations to monitor themselves or rent third parties to do so; a valuable technique, which lacks transparency, affects only a few farms, and is the subject of conflicts of interest.