The Cerrado: how Brazil's vital 'water tank' went from forest to soy fields
The Cerrado savannah has become an agricultural powerhouse, but wildlife, forests and local communities have paid the price
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How can we stop using soya linked to deforestation?
by Dom Phillips
Wed 25 Nov 2020 10.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 25 Nov 2020 14.45 EST
It took just a few decades for Brazilian agriculture to transform its tropical savannah hinterlands – the Cerrado – into an agricultural powerhouse.
Farmers and the growing agribusiness sector celebrated rising sales of soya and beef, and the roads and towns that grew up with them. But environmentalists and Cerrado communities say the advances came at the price of roaring deforestation, land grabbing, violence and the loss of traditional lands.
Nearly half (44%) of the Cerrado’s native vegetation, which includes scrubland, grasslands and forests, is already used for agriculture, the MapBiomas monitoring project calculates. And under Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is supported by powerful farming lobbies, the rest of its 2m sq km is disappearing fast. Last year alone, 6,500 sq km was cleared – adding to the 283,000 sq km of forest, grassland and scrub cut down since 2001.
This year so far the Cerrado has seen more than 61,000 fire alerts – up from 39,000 in the whole of 2018, before Bolsonaro took power – raising fears for its future. It is an immense, important carbon sink, storing hundreds of tons a hectare in its soil and deep root systems.
“The Cerrado is like the water tank of Brazil. This is impacting the fluvial regime of rivers, of important rivers,” said Britaldo Soares-Filho, professor of environmental modelling at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “The Cerrado is a biodiversity hotspot and is under a lot of pressure.”
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/25/the-cerrado-how-brazils-vital-water-tank-went-from-forest-to-soy-fields
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