Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2007 - Amazon Harvest

Soy Boom

Brazil is one of a few countries with room to grow its farm area—albeit by clearing vast forests (left). The country doubled the amount of land planted in soy in the last decade to meet new demand for exports to Europe and China (right).

Go Deeper

The Nature Conservancy in Brazil
Brazil’s unparalleled natural treasures include tropical rainforests of the Amazon, extensive grasslands of the Cerrado, arid scrublands of the Caatinga, and the seemingly infinite wetlands of the Pantanal.

Explore the Amazon
Explore the Amazon River Basin, which harbors nearly one-third of the world’s species and contains nearly one-quarter of the earth’s fresh water.

Responsible Soy in the Amazon
The Nature Conservancy is working with with soy farmers on the Responsible Soy Project, an initiative that has the potential to conserve nearly 1.2 million acres of this important tropical forest.

Burning and clearing of land

Cargill, with its extensive soy infrastructure in Brazil, was already feeling pressure from Europe and agreed to participate in the project. The company provided $390,000 in funding and facilitated access for the Conservancy to work with farmers around the Amazon River city of Santarém in the state of Pará, where Cargill set up operations for loading ships with soy.

But soon after getting under way, the ambitious soy certification plan morphed into something more pragmatic. “We realized that before we could do any kind of certification, we had to get farmers in compliance with Brazil’s Forest Code, which is pretty rigorous,” says Francis. Just helping farmers meet the largely unheeded laws would be no small feat.

The project got a big boost in May 2006, when Cargill found itself the focus of a Greenpeace protest and a blockade at its Santarém port. While protesters climbed up grain chutes, Greenpeace sailed a ship into the grain-loading facility, blocking operations.

Caught in the cross hairs of public scrutiny, the company announced it would stop buying soy from farmers around Santarém unless they took steps to comply with the law. With Cargill the only company with facilities to export soy from the area, what had started as a certification pilot project now became a do-or-die edict for farmers around Santarém: Go green and get legal, or lose access to the only game in town.

Paying the Price

Out in the fields of Western Pará state, around Santarém, it looks as though it will be the soy farmers who will pay the price for European demands for environmental compliance. And yet these farmers appear resigned to the rules and the foreigners who are imposing them.

“We know that the market demands this,” says Fabio Luis Maraschin, a stoic farmer from near Santarém who is one of about 180 farmers enrolled in the Responsible Soy Project. “We know it is for the good of the region. We know it is necessary.”

Maraschin and other Santarém soy farmers supplying Cargill cannot ignore the company’s ultimatum or they stand to lose their main source of income. After decades of little environmental oversight, the farmers are being told that the Forest Code is now to be enforced, and that it will cost them if they don’t get in line and work to reforest cleared lands.

Their one consistent motivation is security. First, living within the law would mean they would no longer be at the mercy of corrupt local officials who demand bribes from farmers not in compliance with the Forest Code. Second is the possibility of getting a much-sought-after document from the state government certifying them and their land as legal and compliant.

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