{"id":190418,"date":"2025-09-29T18:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/190418\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T18:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:02:08","slug":"how-the-worlds-taste-for-soya-is-eating-brazils-amazon-amazon-rainforest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/190418\/","title":{"rendered":"How the world\u2019s taste for soya is eating Brazil\u2019s Amazon | Amazon rainforest"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2012, Jos\u00e9 Pereira do Nascimento lost his home when the Santo Ant\u00f4nio hydroelectric station in Porto Velho, in Brazil<\/a>\u2019s north-west Amazon basin, opened its floodgates. The 3,568MW plant, built to provide power for 45 million people, released a muddy torrent that flooded his neighbourhood, forcing 120 families to evacuate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe river has gone out of control. We used to know when it would flood and when it would dry up. Now nobody knows any more,\u201d says Nascimento, a rancher. \u201cWhat men call progress has killed our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

His is a sad tale, but not uncommon in the Amazon, where public works driven by political ambition and economic upswing have replaced the wilderness with boom towns, highways, dams and farms. While these projects have brought paved roads, electricity and jobs, they have also caused upheaval through disorderly urbanisation<\/a>, organised crime<\/a>, rapid deforestation<\/a> and climate disruption<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A 2012 photograph of part of the Tri\u00e2ngulo neighbourhood in Porto Velho, which was flooded by water redirected from the Santo Ant\u00f4nio hydroelectric station. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Fuelled by undaunted farmers and pioneering crop science, the soya bean industry has spread deep into the Amazon, blanketing the land, filling silos, helping convert Brazil into the world\u2019s leading exporter<\/a> and propelling the country\u2019s agribusiness-boosted GDP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Studies show that transport of soya beans and maize in the so-called Amazon arc \u2013 the infrastructure for hauling crops \u2013 grew 4.8% in the past year and by 288% in the past 10 years<\/a>. As the agricultural belt expands, it is reshaping the map of the Amazonian environment, infrastructure, commerce, politics and livelihoods.<\/p>\n

Brazil is now one of the world\u2019s most bounteous agricultural producers, driven by harvests in the Cerrado, or central scrublands, and more recently in the Amazon biome. Soya beans are now cultivated in 25 of Brazil\u2019s 27 states<\/a> and cover more than half the nation\u2019s arable land, from the pampas to the equator.<\/p>\n

In the first five months of 2025, Brazil became the top soya bean exporter with 51.53m tonnes, a 4.93% increase<\/a> from the same period of 2024.<\/p>\n

Nearly 80% of soya beans are used for livestock and aquaculture, as China, the main buyer, uses 85% for animal feed<\/a>, linking rising global meat demand to Brazil\u2019s expanding exports.<\/p>\n

Three decades ago, only four of the nine Amazonian states planted soya beans. Today, all nine do, helping to make the legume Brazil\u2019s fastest-growing commodity. Mato Grosso, a huge state that straddles the Cerrado and the Amazon, is the nation\u2019s top producer. In Rond\u00f4nia, soya bean cultivation has more than doubled<\/a> since 2019, as has the economy.<\/p>\n

An aerial view of the Paulo Leal Community in Porto Velho, which is hemmed in by vast soya bean plantations encroaching on the village. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Under increasing public pressure, traders and big producers of the beans signed a \u201csoya moratorium\u201d<\/a> in 2006, committing to forgo buying and selling soya beans grown on Amazonian plots deforested after 2008.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the European Commission went further<\/a>, not only banning the sale of soya beans \u2013 and six other commodity crops \u2013 harvested from recently cleared Amazonian lands, but also requiring buyers to prove their imports were deforestation-free.<\/p>\n

The good news for agribusiness is that the tighter restrictions have not curtailed productivity. According to the latest report<\/a> on the Amazon soya bean moratorium, although 95.6% of the expansion occurred in areas that were already affected by human activity before 2008, 16% of the area used to grow soya beans<\/a> in the Amazon was cleared after the ban, and cultivation in untouched forest nearly tripled from 2018 to 2023, reaching 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres).<\/p>\n

A huge field ready for harvest. Agricultural production from this region is primarily for export. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

These figures used to be controversial in Brazil \u2013 a cause for celebration for large producers and denounced by environmentalists, who are preparing for Cop30<\/a>, the critical UN climate conference in November.<\/p>\n

They invaded our land. But because we hadn\u2019t built on our lot, they moved in, planted soya beans and stayedJos\u00e9 Pereira do Nascimento<\/p>\n

Amazonian growers, however, continued to grumble that the soya moratorium was too prohibitive and violated free enterprise. They claimed that the rule barred land clearing even when another law permitted it<\/a> \u2013 under Brazil\u2019s 2012 forestry code<\/a>, Amazonian farms may deforest up to 20% of their property.<\/p>\n

Last year, three Amazonian governors, led by Rond\u00f4nia\u2019s Marcos Rocha, passed laws cancelling tax breaks<\/a> to signatories of the moratorium, alleging the pact amounted to a soya cartel. They drew praise from local farmers, many of whom had been caught out clearing forest for planting.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s anti-monopoly authority, Cade<\/a>, agreed and, on 18 August, suspended the moratorium<\/a> on the grounds that it unfairly advantaged a few big traders and farmers over medium and small-scale soya bean producers. A federal judge promptly overruled the antitrust board<\/a>, and reinstated the moratorium.<\/p>\n

But with the agricultural lobby flexing its muscles in Bras\u00edlia, the quarrel is far from over. Even if the moratorium holds, risks to the rainforest and its inhabitants remain.<\/p>\n

Nascimento \u2013 Z\u00e9 Pereira to friends and family \u2013 has a front-row seat watching the soya bean boom. After shuttling between cheap hotels for nearly a year, he resettled in a small villa 16 miles (25km) from Porto Velho. Though he is not at risk of losing another home, the retired 70-year-old has watched uneasily as the land around him is surrendered to soya beans.<\/p>\n

A photograph of Nascimento in the hotel he was rehoused in. He is holding one of the meals provided by the hydropower company to those displaced. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cThey invaded our land,\u201d says Nascimento. \u201cBut because we hadn\u2019t built on our lot, they moved in, planted soya beans right up to the fence, and stayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cash crop has encircled his neighbourhood, overrun a local cemetery and now stretches to the horizon. Some days, the air is so thick with clouds of herbicides and pesticides that he can taste it. First, there\u2019s \u201cthe tingling sensation\u201d in his face. Then comes \u201cthe dizziness\u201d and \u201cdifficulty breathing\u201d, he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just me. Everyone over here feels it.\u201d<\/p>\n

To planters, this is the scent of progress.<\/p>\n

Although most soya bean farmers are opportunists rather than villains<\/a> in Amazon predation, the European Commission has traced strong indirect links between clearcutting and soya sowing. This is the case in Mato Grosso, where mechanised farms typically take over spent pasture, displacing ranchers such as Nascimento into pristine areas of neighbouring Par\u00e1, in the eastern Amazon basin.<\/p>\n

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That pattern also drives up the price of forested land, in the expectation of future gains once the trees are gone \u2013 \u201ceven though soya bean is planted years after\u201d, the European Commission concluded.<\/p>\n

A large grain barge being loaded in Porto Velho. The storage silos in the background show the scale of region\u2019s agricultural production of soya beans, corn and more. Photograph: Avener Prado<\/p>\n

Critically, however, even if no more trees fall to farmers, expanding soya bean plantations fuel the lobby\u2019s demands for bigger and better infrastructure to store and ship their harvest to international markets. Hence the clamour to lay more asphalt, dredge rivers, build bridges and ports, and put down rails to haul ever bigger loads over already strained Amazonian transport networks.<\/p>\n

Take the BR-364, the main highway connecting western Amazonia to ports on the Atlantic coast<\/a>, where every harvest brings traffic to a standstill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see 3,000 to 4,000 soya [articulated truck] rigs a day pass through Porto Velho,\u201d says Ad\u00e9lio Barofaldi, chief executive of Rovema, a logistics company in Rond\u00f4nia. \u201cWe are talking about 200km of gridlock every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trucks loaded with grain and soya beans wait at Posto Miriam to unload at the ports of Porto Velho. In the background, the Candeias River forms part of the logistics corridor linking farm production to the Madeira waterway. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

To ease bottlenecks, the federal government recently privatised part of the highway, with plans to duplicate a critical 60-mile stretch, tellingly nicknamed the \u201cAgro North route<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

All to the detriment of the wilderness. A study found that nearly 95% of Amazon deforestation in Brazil falls within 3 miles of highways<\/a>. In the Colombian Amazon, 80% of forest clearance occurs within less than 5 miles of roads.<\/p>\n

The risk is that this technological triumph might hypnotise people into destroying the Cerrado and AmazoniaSandro Dutra e Silva, environmental historian<\/p>\n

But roads lead to more roads. A recent study comparing the knock-on effects of highways<\/a> in tropical regions found that every mile of official \u201cfirst-cut road\u201d in the Amazon basin generated another 30 miles of secondary roads. And much more clearcutting and degradation happened around secondary tracks than official routes.<\/p>\n

Soya\u2019s success in the Americas is a cautionary tale, says Sandro Dutra e Silva, an environmental historian at Goi\u00e1s State University studying the Cerrado<\/a>. \u201cTropical agriculture has been hailed as a miracle, transforming Brazil into a farming power,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Senator Conf\u00facio Moura at an auction for a road concession, awarded to private sector bidders as part of a multi-billion real plan for upgrades and maintenance of the so-called \u2018Agro North route\u2019. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

However, because the savanna sits on South America\u2019s key aquifers, overproduction could disrupt watersheds and weather. \u201cThe risk is that this technological triumph might hypnotise people into destroying the Cerrado and Amazonia,\u201d Dutra says.<\/p>\n

Alexandre Nepomuceno, head of soya bean research at Embrapa<\/a>, Brazil\u2019s national agricultural institute \u2013 which developed soya strains that thrived in the tropics, boosting the seed\u2019s use in the Amazon \u2013 cautions against vilifying scientific achievement for policy shortcomings.<\/p>\n

He says the same enterprising scientific tradition that brought harvests to the equator can also help Amazonian growers tread more lightly on the land.<\/p>\n

Mariangela Hungria, a Brazilian soil microbiology expert, won the 2025 World Food prize<\/a> for her research into strains of bacteria that suck nitrogen from the air and attach it to the roots of soya beans<\/a>, all but eliminating the need to import costly petroleum-based fertilisers.<\/p>\n

Last year, such biological nitrogen fixation delivered Brazil a bumper crop, saved $25m (\u00a318.5m) in imported fertiliser, and avoided emitting 230m tons of climate-warming carbon<\/a> into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

A high-voltage transmission line carries power from the Jirau hydropower plant into Brazil\u2019s national grid. Photograph: Avener Prado\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Nepomuceno says that cutting-edge research can show the way. Still, science alone cannot save the Amazon. According to him, that is a job for policymakers, lawmakers and the public authorities that make the rules and enforce the red lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that Brazil<\/a> already has plenty of deforested areas,\u201d Nepomuceno says, \u201cwe have no need of clearing more land to grow soya beans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2012, Jos\u00e9 Pereira do Nascimento lost his home when the Santo Ant\u00f4nio hydroelectric station in Porto Velho,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-190418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}