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Soy Threatens the Amazon, Warn Activists |
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By Mario Osava*
Environmental
groups say soybean production is driving deforestation of the Brazilian
Amazon, but some agricultural experts disagree.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Soybean production, which
awakens the ire of environmentalists because of the rapid expansion
of transgenic varieties, is the target of yet another criticism:
increased pressure on Brazil's Amazon forests.
Although soybean fields do not directly replace forested areas of
the Amazon, their expansion in the surrounding areas drive up land
prices and ''push'' other less profitable farming practices, like
ranching, into the forests, explains Roberto Smeraldi, coordinator
of the non-governmental organization Friends of the Earth-Brazil.
Furthermore, soy -- now Brazil's leading export -- is advancing
accompanied by the creation of transportation infrastructure, which
is also contributes to deforestation by improving access to the
vast Amazon.
Each year the Amazon loses some 25,000 square km of forest. Soybean
farming began in Brazil in the 1960s in Brazil's southern pampas,
where the climate is closer to that of China, where soy originated.
Soy production then began expanding northward, and the Brazilian
agricultural research agency, EMBRAPA, developed varieties adapted
to more tropical climes. EMBRAPA, a network of 40 specialized research
centers, has played a key role in the country's agricultural development
of the past three decades.
The NGOs denounce the expansion of soybean cultivation in the transition
area between what is known as the Cerrado -- a savannah ecosystem
-- and the Amazon, where deforestation is taking a serious toll
on the climate and biodiversity of the two biomes.
There has been ''explosive growth'' of soy in some points of the
Amazon, such as the Santarém region, in the western part of the
northern state of Pará, says Ane Alencar, a researcher with the
Amazonian Environmental Research Institute.
Santarém, surrounded by secondary forests, in some places was logged
three centuries ago, near a soybean exporting port, and is a ''pocket
of drought'', with a topography ideal for industrial farming, she
said.
The cultivated area is still relatively small -- around 30,000 hectares
last year -- but is expected to see the addition of another 20,000
this year, ''advancing on the native forests... and we don't know
what impact soybean monoculture will have on the ecosystem,'' Alencar
said.
Friends of the Earth has indicated eight other areas of expansion
within the Amazon or along its boundaries, mostly in savannah areas,
but which also threaten the tropical forest.
Soybean exports have increased the value of land along the highway
between Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso, and Santarém, which has
spurred the illegal appropriation of public lands. The forests are
cleared to prove possession, and longtime residents have been pushed
out.
But Homero Pereira, president of the Agricultural Federation of
the central-western state of Mato Grosso, denies that soybean production
is causing harm.
And he goes even further, saying those who grow soybeans are ''the
biggest environmentalists'' and put ''conservation into practice,''
because the crop grows in areas that were previously deforested
or were degraded pastures, and improves them by fixing nitrogen
in the soil, thus fertilizing the land.
Nearly all soybean farmer practice ''direct planting'', without
plowing over the land, a technique developed in Brazil to reduce
erosion and retain moisture in the soil. Soy ''is not a monoculture''
because it is alternated with cotton, maize and rice, said Pereira.
Mato Grosso state, which has Amazon forests in the north, is today
Brazil's leading soybean producer. This year 15 million tons were
harvested -- 30 percent of the national total. Ten years ago it
produced just five million tons.
Since the 1980s, soybean cultivation has also expanded rapidly in
the Cerrado, the savannah of low trees that covers a broad swath
of central Brazil, and some ''islands'' of land within the Amazon.
Because of its relatively infertile and acidic soil, it took longer
to be converted into a prosperous farming frontier.
Today it is a prized area, because its productive profile has changed
as a result of fertilizers. The Cerrado also has the advantage of
''well-defined periods of rain'' and a geography that facilitates
farm mechanization, Paulo Roberto Galerani, an EMBRAPA expert in
soy research, told Tierramérica.
The Cerrado ecosystem and favorable climate allow Mato Grosso farmers
to harvest ''between 3,100 and 3,200 kilos of soybeans per hectare,''
a level of productivity surpassing the national average of 2,500
kilos per hectare, said Agricultural Federation president Pereira.
The crop currently is planted over five million hectares, an area
that could double ''simply by recuperating degraded pastureland,''
such that it would be unnecessary to advance into the Amazon, where
''soybeans do not prosper'' due to the weak soil and excess humidity,
he said.
Geraldo Eugenio de França, superintendent of EMBRAPA research and
development, says the country could rationally use 60 million hectares
of degraded areas, effectively doubling Brazil's cultivated area.
It would be possible to double the production of food, fibers and
other agricultural products without destroying the forests of the
Amazon, he said.
EMBRAPA is ''the arm of sustainable development,'' he added, and
rejects both ''unfettered agri-business and radical environmentalism.''
* Mario Osava is an IPS correspondent.
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