Soy and deforestation
Brazil has introduced a series of infrastructure development projects to make its soy exports more competitive. New highways have been built connecting soybean farms to domestic markets in southern Brazil, to new deep-water ports at Itacoatiara and on the Amazon River at Santarém in Pará, and to the country’s largest cargo port, Itaqui in Maranhão state. Improved infrastructure will help Brazil to transport commodities such as soy more efficiently, helping to reduce cost and greenhouse-gas emissions. But with weak governance in frontier regions it is likely to exacerbate deforestation, especially along newly paved highways seeking to integrate the Amazon with the rest of the continent (Killeen, 2007). Over the following pages, we consider the areas most at risk from soy expansion: the Amazon, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Gran Chaco and Chiquitano Dry Forest, as well as the grasslands of the Pampas, Campos and North American Great Plains.
© Adriano Gambarini / WWF-Brazil
The expansion of soy farms can have a devastating impact on natural ecosystems like the Cerrado savannah in Brazil
The Growth of Soy: Impacts and Solutions | page 36