The Cerrado once covered over 200 million ha, but around half the natural vegetation has been lost since the late 1950s (Sawyer, 2008; Jepson, 2005; Jepson et al., 2010), when the ultra-modernist capital Brasilia was conjured out of the heart of the region. According to the Brazilian government, 53 per cent remains relatively intact (MMA, 2010), though other estimates are as low as 35 per cent (Klink and Machado, 2005; Durigan et al., 2007) and 21.3 per cent (Conservation International, 2012). Remaining areas are severely fragmented (Ribeiro et al., 2011), and there are few contiguous areas over 1,000 ha (Durigan and Ratter, 2006). Just over 11 million ha are under protection, though less than 3 million ha – 1.4 per cent of the total area – is classified under the strictest levels of protection, IUCN categories I-IV (Conservation International, 2012; Klink and Machado, 2005).
The soy factor With high acidity and toxic aluminium levels in the soil, the Cerrado was once thought to be unsuitable for agriculture. But new technologies and techniques have allowed farming to spread rapidly over the last 40 years. Initially this was largely driven by cattle ranching, with over 50 million ha being converted (Klink and Machado, 2005). But since 2000 soy, along with other crops such as maize, cotton and sugarcane, has expanded into extensive areas. The pace of this change can be seen in a detailed study that suggests 12 per cent of the Cerrado had been cleared by 1980, 44 per cent by 2000 and 55 per cent by 2005 (Brannstrom, 2009). WWF-Brazil estimates that soy cultivation now takes up around 13-15 million ha (WWF-Brazil, 2012) – around 7 per cent of the Cerrado biome, or an area the size of England.
The Growth of Soy: Impacts and Solutions | page 43
© Leandro Baungartem
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