This is the third of six stories in a series by journalists Alicia Prager and Flávia Milhorance who travelled to the Cerrado in February for Mongabay to assess the impacts of agribusiness on the region’s environment and people “It used to be right there,” says Marcos Rogério Beltrão pointing to a rocky red sand depression under a small wooden bridge and that depression should be filled with running water Another dozen or so nearby streams are either heavily silted or gone to dust in the 40 degree Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) heat of late February in Brazil a former small-scale farmer and now an environmentalist so he has many years of seasonal memories to measure by He guides us along a rural valley where small tributaries should be amply supplying the Arrojado River “It is flowing with 40,000 liters [10,570 gallons] per second during the wet season,” he says “This [weak flow] should be the amount in the dry season.” The locals believe that intensive irrigation for extensive commercial soy corn and cotton crops is why springs and small streams are no longer flowing Correntina has watched the available water diminish over the years while simultaneously industrial agribusiness moved deeper into the Cerrado savannah and set up large-scale irrigation there The municipality is now an important soy producer and harvested 357,000 tons of the crop last year All these causes are related: scientists have found that the conversion of forests and native vegetation to croplands and pasture in the region diminishes evapotranspiration on those lands by an average of 60 percent during the dry season That precipitation failure then causes agribusiness to pump more water for crops being a hotspot of Brazil’s industrial agribusiness expansion has increasingly also become ground zero for conflicts over water “The town is emblematic of the people’s growing dissatisfaction with agribusiness and its impacts on water in the region,” says Samuel Britto that tracks territorial conflicts in western Bahia The NGO has counted 41 major municipal conflicts since 1985 at least 17 streams had been observed to have gone dry things are getting worse as [large scale farming] enterprises take more land,” he says A major water-related protest hit the streets of Correntina on November 11 hundreds of angry local people had destroyed the facilities of the Rio Claro farm They did so out of anger concerning the firm’s perceived high water usage The case is currently being investigated by the authorities who are conducting hearings The damage done was so severe that the Rio Claro farm was inoperable The firm says that it suffered 50 million reais ($15 million) in losses due to the attack The farm was established 14 years ago as a producer of grains and vegetables The Bahia state environmental agency INEMA approved the extraction of 176 million liters (46.5 million gallons) of water per day from the Arrojado River for the operation This daily consumption by the farm could supply the whole town for more than a month based on data from the local water provider Britto didn’t take part in the water-related protests last year He says the demonstrations happened after local people saw sharp decreases in the Arrojado River’s flow and were informed by the media that the farm was planning to further expand its operations; a verified causal link between the farm’s heavy water usage and the river level drop has not been made says that the farm had been utilizing water at below its permitted limit was going to increase capacity to the full water allowance Naste says the company was at all times operating within its environmental license “The company didn’t have any history of conflict with the community It operates totally regularly,“ says Naste He adds that the accusations that the firm was making excessive water removals are “unfounded.” Igarashi’s press office didn’t say precisely how much water the company was withdrawing from the river at the time of the demonstrations Britto says that the public anger leading to the protests was also linked to the farm being licensed at all by Bahia state’s INEMA The agency did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment The Igarashi controversy is just one of several major ongoing water conflicts in Correntina a textile company that has a large-scale farm that grows cotton – an extremely water-intensive crop Sudotex has been licensed by Bahia state to build up to 15 artesian wells on its land and under its permit was to be allowed to withdraw nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) of water from the Urucuia aquifer to irrigate cotton during the Cerrado dry season The company’s water extraction infrastructure was under construction when local people took to the streets to protest the use of so much water by a single farm environmental groups took the case to court which ordered the company to halt construction Sudotex appealed and the case is currently in review The firm declined to comment to Mongabay on the water conflict As countryside water resources around Correntina dry up local people are being forced to pay close attention to rain cycles and river levels Everyone we talked to said the available water was clearly diminishing year after year and no one had a positive image of the large-scale farms and their irrigation operations “It’s because of them that we are facing water problems and they are getting worse,” says Glauciene Moura who lives in a rural part of the Arrojado Valley Moura told us that her family has relied for five generations on the regos a river-fed system of natural artesian aquifers (where groundwater rises to the surface under pressure) to supply neighboring families and small farms Less water from the streams and dried regos force local people to rely instead on the municipal water supply That means they must now pay for a resource that was once freely available and that they can’t afford as much water as they need for small-scale farming Francelina says the rains have been diminishing too The family lost their small food crop for the last three years due to harsh seasonal droughts “The rain was so good,” Francelina remembers Her family also had to reduce its cattle herd because of the need to rent pasture which is also disappearing due to lack of rainfall “We used to have plenty of water here,” recalls Silva Mongabay contacted the Association of Farmers and Irrigators of Bahia (AIBA) which represents 1,300 agricultural associates but the organization didn’t reply to our questions concerning the water crisis Before the arrival of large-scale agribusiness Correntina was mostly covered in native Cerrado vegetation For as long as traditional people can remember the region has been characterized by a good water supply Located in the center of Brazil and composed of many plateaus the Cerrado biome is a vital source of water not just for the region Eight of 12 of Brazil’s major river basins and three aquifers – the Guarani Bambuí and Urucuia – all rely on the Cerrado as a source for much of their water the second-biggest biome in Brazil after the Amazon is for that reason known as the “birthplace of water.” But agribusiness expansion – with its rapid deforestation and wholesale irrigation – has greatly diminished this natural capacity The Cerrado’s native vegetation once covered 2 million square kilometers (772,200 square miles) more than 20 percent of Brazil – an area bigger than Great Britain Meanwhile, a paper published in the journal Global Change Biology confirms the observations and suspicions of Correntina’s traditional people: large scale agriculture is impacting the Cerrado’s water cycles The study suggests that increasing cropland has decreased the amount of water recycled to the atmosphere each year. Additional research by scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Federal University of Mato Grosso have found that the capacity of the Cerrado to deliver and store water depends heavily on the biome’s native vegetation; the conversion of that vegetation to pasture deteriorates the soil But even as science confirms the growing threat of Brazilian water scarcity, national laws to protect the water supply are growing weaker. For example, intermittent springs like those that feed the tributaries and rivers in Correntina, are not currently protected under Brazil’s New Forest Code, according to a study that analyzed the code’s effectiveness Only springs that hold water year round receive state protection 40 percent of the Cerrado’s springs are seasonal but are nonetheless indispensable for the biome’s wellbeing The removal of vegetation from around these springs could dry them up forever says the author of the paper examining the Forest Code Rafael Loyola of the Federal University of Goias Jorge Enoch, a researcher at the government institution Embrapa Cerrados, argues in a recent article that even the much deforested and degraded Cerrado still has the capacity to meet heightened agribusiness water demands he says that poor land management and the concentration of large irrigated farm operations in just a few areas have sparked water shortages and fierce conflicts with local people There are real solutions available to address the worsening water problem: the scientists involved in the Brown University study suggested that double cropping could mitigate the overall decrease in water recycling now seen on much Cerrado agribusiness land Double cropping is the planting of two crops in the same field in a single growing season and it imitates the effect of year-round vegetation holding water in the soil during the dry season and preventing high rates of evapotranspiration and not watering at the hottest part of the day during the dry season could save more water such innovations may only be able to go just so far: Matopiba (an acronym for the Cerrado states of Maranhão Piauí and Bahia) is seeing a dramatic surge in agribusiness which means a far greater use of diminishing water supplies CPT’s data points to a 150 percent increase (totalling 172 major water conflicts) in Brazil over the five year period from 2011 to 2016 Most of these conflicts were in the southeast But the north saw 16,000 families impacted while the northeast had 17 major conflicts resulting from the private appropriation of water supplies by agribusiness The Matopiba region was historically occupied by indigenous groups and traditional communities that typically operated small farms and put little demand on the region’s once plentiful water. But since the 1980s, a variety of factors have attracted large-scale farmers along with transnational commodities companies like Cargill and Bunge The result is a clash of cultures – of local sustainable lifestyles conflicting with international agribusiness national and transnational commodities companies a representative of a traditional community He says that his neighbors have long relied on Arrojado Valley water and on the natural climactic rhythms of the Cerrado Now everyone is desperate to save their vanishing springs the community has put up fences around the springs to protect them But Santos knows it likely won’t be enough “My grandparents were born and lived here,” he says FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa as protected areas become battlegrounds over history and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins and trying to forge a path forward […] ← → Algacir Schadeck snaps a fat ear of corn off a dry corn stalk in western Bahia one of Brazil’s leading grain-producing regions he’s standing at the edge of a field more than half a mile across that bears 1,000 tons of corn As the manager of Fazenda Rio Claro farm and the descendent of a long line of farmers he pronounces the pumpkin-orange kernels perfect The water that feeds this farm is pulled from the nearby Arrojado River and sprayed over the fields using pivots — long pipes propped up on wheeled frames that rotate around a central point as they spray — each consuming millions of gallons every year Fazenda Rio Claro’s pivots shower its crops with more than 500 million gallons of water annually more than is used by the residents of Correntina Wetlands have dried up; crops have failed; many subsistence farmers are struggling. But the question of why Brazil is drying up is complex. Much of the country has experienced reduced rainfall over the past two years. This year, southern and central Brazil are experiencing their worst drought in nearly a century has altered water flows both above and below ground climate change is inexorably increasing evaporation Subscribe to the E360 Newsletter for weekly updates delivered to your inbox. Sign Up who have lived in western Bahia for generations say they have little doubt what’s causing the declines in water that they’re experiencing: They blame pumping by large-scale industrial farms for robbing them of water they need to slake the thirst of their manioc Scientists studying the region agree that rivers are ebbing But they disagree about whether pumping by corporate farms is the primary culprit and whether it makes sense to keep pumping more “I planted these coconut trees and they died.” The name of his village This has recently become a cruel irony for the 150 or so geraizeiro families that live there Now the spring produces only enough for cooking they installed a plastic pipe to carry the water where spindly drought-tolerant trees and dense shrubs stretch beyond the pasture “I’m thinking that we’re going to get wet,” says dos Santos as the soil turns squishy beneath his feet But his sandals are barely damp by the time he and Brito reach the shallow pool where the spring seeps up from the mud They pry the lid off a shoebox-size cement box that feeds the pipe and peer inside “I’ve never seen it this way,” says Antonio Researchers have not yet come to Brejo Verde. But their work across western Bahia’s plateau is aiming to determine what is happening to the water in rivers and springs throughout the region, many of which are running dry In early 2020, a team at São Paulo State University published a study of the Urucuia aquifer — a huge underground reservoir that underlies western Bahia’s plateau This aquifer is the source of all of region’s surface water during the long dry season and it’s the primary headwater of the São Francisco River the fourth longest river in South America and a major supplier of hydroelectric power A movement grows to help farmers reduce pollution and turn a profit. Read more is only a small fraction of the aquifer’s estimated 290 cubic miles of water Groundwater users — primarily the farms with pivots — will have plenty of water for far into the future is how the loss is affecting surface water Depletion of the aquifer might explain the dwindling spring in Brejo Verde, says Chang. “My suspicion is that probably a small drop in the groundwater will affect the spring water,” he says. Such effects have been noted in research reports before Kiang has asked Gonçalves to build a mathematical model of the aquifer that could relate declines in the water table to specific changes in surface water an effort that he says could be completed in the coming months but experts agree that river flow and aquifer levels are declining Determining what is causing those changes has important policy implications It holds the key to forecasting the future of water supplies which wends 1,800 miles through five states and supplies 10 percent of Brazil’s electricty And it begs the potentially politically explosive question of what or who is to blame Most water experts agree that a reduction in rainfall and the growth of big commodity farms have both played a role “We have no definitive answers,” says Chang Rainfall in western Bahia increased starting in about 1980, but since the early 1990s it has slowly been dropping, leading up to the recent drought. Compared to the 1980s, the period since 1993 has been 12 percent drier Marques says “a decade of rain decline” is likely the primary cause of water depletion in the region president of the Brazilian Cotton Producers Association the certainty is that it is due to the decrease in rainfall in the last three or four years,” he says But Chang and Gonçalves dispute this conclusion “This is not about rainfall,” Gonçalves says The GRACE satellites measured a huge loss of water during a 12-year period during which rainfall didn’t decline at all “The only way we can explain this drop is by extraction [for irrigation],” says Chang Farms in western Bahia require state licenses to pump water and he suspects that a lot of pumping from wells and rivers “is underreported or not reported.” an atmospheric scientist who is Marques’s colleague at Universidade Federal de Viçosa When asked if farming or rainfall decline are robbing more water from western Bahia he said: “I think they are equally important.” Costa and Marques agree that no more pivots should be built in the most densely irrigated parts of western Bahia such as parts of the Grande River watershed the largest of western Bahia’s three basins No more groundwater can responsibly be withdrawn there But they say there is still room for growth elsewhere on the plateau This is a welcome message for the cotton and grain farmers The Association of Farmers and Irrigators of Bahia forecasts that the amount of farmland on the plateau will grow by 60 percent over the next decade Many geraizeiros feel there is already enough evidence that the commercial farms are robbing them of water says “agribusiness should be forbidden” on the plateau Geraizeiro anger has already led to conflict a few hundred geraizeiros arrived at Fazenda Rio Claro In a riot that’s been called the “Water War,” they torched combines An illicit trade in Brazil is sending tiny songbirds to their deaths. Read more Daniel Grossman is a journalist and radio and web producer who has reported from all seven continents. He is the author of Deep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High Our Oceans Will Rise. More about Daniel Grossman → Never miss an article. Subscribe to the E360 Newsletter → Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information A farmer looks over corn during a harvest at a farm in Correntina 2023 at 3:29 PM EDTBookmarkSaveLock This article is for subscribers only.Brazil is in talks with international investors to get 10 billion reais ($2 billion) in funding before the end of the year as the agriculture powerhouse works to recover degraded pastureland to boost crop acreage The plan is to use the money to establish loans for farmers starting in 2024 secretary of commerce and international relations at the nation’s agriculture ministry said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference in Sao Paulo The ongoing negotiations for funding include talks with sovereign funds as well as other government-controlled entities in Asia and the Middle East An April 8 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a video of people knocking electrical towers down with a crowd cheering in the background "Haarp destroyed," reads the post's caption It was liked over 3,000 times in three days Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks This video shows water restriction protests from 2017 in Brazil The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program While HAARP's ionospheric transmitter looks similar to the equipment knocked down in the post the video does not show HAARP being destroyed HAARP is still operational and has not been attacked, Rod Boyce Contrary to the post's claim, HAARP has only one location: Gakona, Alaska. There are two other ionospheric heaters in the world: the Sura Ionospheric Heating Facility in Russia and the EISCAT Scientific Association in Norway Fact check: Video shows 'bono wave' tidal bore, not HAARP-generated phenomena which included the same video in its report. A peer-reviewed journal article about water policy in Brazil says "Around 1,000 people occupied the Igarashi Farm headquarters then destroyed the electrical equipment that pumped water for irrigation and set fire to a shed and tractors." Images of the downed electrical equipment are also featured in an article by Notícias Agrícolas This isn't the first time the video has been misattributed. It was falsely linked to the Landless Rural Workers Movement in 2020, according to AFP Brazil USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook By Kevin Vaughn Ramona Niz grabs pearly white mandioca roots by the handful and pushes them through a grinder The homemade wooden contraption used to extract starch sits outside next to her home in Manantiales an isolated farming town in the Northeast Argentinian province of Corrientes where Niz and her family are surrounded by mandioca and corn fields that thrive under the intense summer sun scenes like this used to be quotidian in every rural home but an exodus from subsistence farming spurred in part by the proliferation of industrial agriculture has turned many of these machines into mere decoration Half a dozen women stand in a semi-circle and watch Niz in awe They are from the organization Cocineros del Iberá a network of more than a hundred cooks and food producers from towns and villages that surround the Esteros del Iberá a 1.3 million hectare stretch of wetlands that cuts through the middle of Corrientes Members are working to reinvigorate local food traditions mandioca is both an essential pantry ingredient and the livelihood of farmers and cooks across the region. This homemade wooden contraption isn't as common a sight as it once was.As she works a metal grater spins thunderously and pulverizes the roots spitting out thin strips that splatter drops of starch in every direction One person had to strongarm the crank to turn the grater while the other person fed the machine mandioca a retrofit motor condenses the job of shredding hundreds of kilos worth of mandioca each season This step is the only part of the process of extracting starch from mandioca roots that the Niz family has mechanized. “We do everything by hand,” Niz tells me through a wide smile that never leaves her face Processing mandioca is often a two-person job.Niz and her assistant Mari Flores drop mandioca by the bucketful into a thin sheet that is folded in half and hung on a clothesline One of them pours jugs full of water through the sheet while the other agitates the mandioca until the water runs clear What’s left over is a compacted opaque ball of mandioca which gets tossed into the pig pen along with fallen fruits and avocado The liquid that collects in a trough below the sheet sits for the afternoon until the starch and water separate The starchy paste is scooped out and laid onto a sheet of metal under the sun in the front yard On days when the heat hovers around 100 degrees Fahrenheit the wet starch turns powdery and dry in a day or two it is ready for making chipá (spelled chipa in original Guarani) a family of cheesy breads eaten from dusk to dawn between swigs of yerba mate. mandioca starch is often sold directly by the producer or at the local vegetable shop but in the nearby provincial capital just two hours away it's near impossible to find anything but industrial starch which includes different mandioca varieties that are mixed together and dried hastily in a giant oven. “It isn’t the same at all,” says cook Romina Esquivel “You can feel the difference in your hands Making chipá is a labor of love.Among the small crowd watching Niz work are Estefania Cutro and Gisela Medina and was immediately smitten with a plate of kivevé and chicharrón trenzado a slightly sweet squash pureé and braided beef confit cooked with lemon and mandarin juice. “I always understood that the work I do finishes with a plate of food,” explains Cutro “I work mostly with farmers but am curious about how that food transforms inside the kitchen Cutro got the idea to organize a formal network of cooks and food producers after attending a conference in the northwest province of Jujuy a region where a massive tourism industry emerged practically overnight after the Quebrada de Humahuaca—a valley in Northeast Argentina known for its colorful mountainscapes—was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. “The people I met struggled to convince locals to get in early on tourism,” Cutro recalls the wetlands were being turned into a national park and Cutro wanted to make sure local communities could benefit from imminent tourism development whilst preserving their culture “We knew that the park would attract travelers to the small towns that surround it It was important to create a formal network that would stimulate a circular economy and unite and give autonomy to local producers and cooks.” Cutro and Medina secured funding to equip home kitchens with new ovens and to provide educational resources for proper food handling and business development for transforming informal hustles into proper vocations the Cocineros del Iberá network has been adopted as a cultural program by the provincial government and the organization has become the face of food fairs across the region. chipá dough spread onto a branch and rotated slowly over a fire pit until the cheese bubbles and browns. “My abuela had a special eucalyptus branch reserved for making mbocá,” Esquivel tells me ”It was something we ate on the weekends or special occasions It’s a luxury for everyone but the one holding the stick.” She gestures towards the sun The lunch spread is a cross-section of the indigenous Guaraní and Spanish Criollo food traditions that blended into one another in Northeast Argentina and across the border of neighboring Paraguay: mandioca and corn-based dishes that incorporated butter and cheese when the Spanish brought cattle to the Americas Such dishes have defined the local diet for centuries. this kind of a feast is an unusual occurrence Many of these foods are rarely consumed outside the home and the labor that goes into preparing them is making many varieties of chipá a less common sight at the dining table these days In the nearby provincial capital and the half-dozen towns I stopped through around Corrientes I found little more than classic chipá in bakeries and street stalls—sprinkled amongst a sea of restaurants serving steak foods that now hold more social currency in the local dining scene. The Cocineros' growing presence in food fairs is helping turn that around. The recent publication of Cocina Correntina a cookbook edited by Cutro with the Guarani-Correntino recipes of her mentor botanist and fervent home cook Aurelio Schini Cacace will hopefully bring Correntino food identity to a national audience. Mandioca is a staple ingredient in Corrientes.“I can’t imagine living anywhere except Corrientes,” says Cutro our way of living is reflected completely in our food and we need to be conscientious about preserving that unique identity.” Observing quietly as Esquivel and Acosta grind corn and knead dough is Romina Coronel a 20-something cook who is the youngest of the bunch—and represents a future that the network is hoping to inspire More and more young aspiring cooks are coming onboard Cocineros and learning about foods that “There are lots of foods that my family stopped preparing,” Coronel says “I call my abuela all the time to ask if she remembers different recipes I think that she is surprised that I want to learn how to make our family’s dishes.” A desire to revitalize the food of their grandparents is just a small part of the mission Cocineros aims to resuscitate a way of life that values a connection to place and the food borne from it. “Food is a social expression,” says Medina in between sips of mate This isn’t merely economic or even about creating a good product it is about telling the story of our home and our culture and all of the people behind it Get the recipe > Get the recipe > Get the recipe > ADVERTISEMENTADADGet the recipe > ADVERTISEMENTADADWant more SAVEUR?Get our favorite recipes Articles may contain affiliate links, which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use. An investigation by Repórter Brasil revealed new connections between the company and agribusiness giants Documents obtained by the report show that soybean from Agrícola Xingu supplied the silos of ALZ Grãos the French Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) and the local subsidiary of the Japanese group Zen-Noh Grain The joint operation between the multinationals exports soybean and corn through its own port terminal in Maranhão Repórter Brasil obtained a copy of a contract providing for the delivery of almost 3,000 tons of soybeans from Nutrade to ALZ Grãos would come from the Agrícola Xingu warehouses in São Desidério These are areas currently used to compensate for environmental liabilities on farms in the region. According to the Brazilian Forest Code rural properties located in the Cerrado should maintain at least 20% of their land with the original native forest the law allows offsetting liabilities through the acquisition of preserved areas outside the property It is precisely one of these areas that overlaps with the lands claimed by the Capão do Modesto community as the members of this traditional community are known develop their own methods of subsistence agriculture harvesting native Cerrado fruit and herding cattle Lawyers and local activists interviewed by Repórter Brasil believe that the preservation area overlapping Capão do Modesto was acquired fraudulently. According to a report by Global Witness its acquisition is part of a process of “green land grabbing” in which lands traditionally occupied by local communities are usurped to serve as legal reserves for agribusiness companies with environmental liabilities which used to be used by the community for cattle grazing now has fences and signs that prohibit the circulation of animals and members of Capão do Modesto It is managed like a condominium by nine agricultural and livestock enterprises: right after the gate you can see signs that identify the place as a legal reserve area of these companies community members have filed more than ten police reports reporting the intimidation they have suffered The threats to the members are not only physical part of the rural producers who claim to be owners of the legal reserves surrounding Capão do Modesto filed a lawsuit in the Bahia Court of Justice against members of the community members of the Capão do Modesto community are invading their land and destroying native vegetation The lawsuit aims to prevent the community from releasing cattle in the area For the “fecheiros” of Capão do Modesto this is one more way of pressuring them to leave their land The case is still pending a final decision from the courts In a statement Bunge said it does not comment on commercial relations with specific producers but said it is “committed to achieving deforestation-free supply chains by 2025” the company claims to have “100% traceability and monitoring” and said it is “acting strongly to encourage the industry to strengthen the traceability and monitoring of indirect purchases” Sua contribuição permite que a gente continue revelando o que muita gente faz de tudo para esconder Receba as investigações daagência de jornalismo daRepórter Brasil no seu e-mail. JORNALISMO Diretos Humanos Mundo do Trabalho Povos Tradicionais Questão Agrária Socioambiental Trabalho Escravo English Especiais PESQUISA Impacto Sobre O que fazemos Parcerias Biblioteca English PODCASTS Cova medida Esperança Jornadas Trabalheira VÍDEOS Reportagens Documentários Outros SOBRE NÓSQuem somos Equipe Transparência Prêmios Contato Diretos Humanos Mundo do Trabalho Povos Tradicionais Questão Agrária Socioambiental Trabalho Escravo English Especiais Impacto Sobre O que fazemos Parcerias Biblioteca English EDUCAÇÃO PODCASTS Cova medida Esperança Jornadas Trabalheira Reportagens Documentários Outros Quem somos Equipe Transparência Prêmios Contato Receba as investigações da agência dejornalismo da Repórter Brasil no seu e-mail. Desenvolvido por Studio Cubo e Design por Paula Carvalho Home Impacto Sobre O que fazemos Parcerias Biblioteca English Home Cova medida Esperança Jornadas Trabalheira Home Reportagens Documentários Outros APOIE Receba o conteúdo da Repórter Brasil direto na sua caixa de email cowboys and their families got on buses and headed to the Rio Claro farm one of many companies using large-scale irrigation in Brazil’s Bahia state They blamed the farm for the degradation of the Arrojado River which supplies water to their lands in Correntina municipality 830 kilometers (515 miles) from the state capital In August 2020, the Bahia Institute of Environment and Water Resources renewed Igarashi’s water-use license. This allows the company to collect more than 176 million liters (46 million gallons) of water a day from the Arrojado River for the next four years to irrigate the farm at the heart of the popular uprising This concession alone is equivalent to almost 60 times the water consumption of Correntina’s population The Arrojado is part of the basin of the Corrente River Thousands of peasants still live in harmony with the Cerrado where cattle roam the chapadões – large plateaus with native forest – and grow their beans and cassava in wetlands and valleys “Living here is very good: everything we plant will grow,” says farmer João Barbosa Magalhães one of the 630 traditional communities spread across Bahia Many of those communities are located in the west of the state Magalhães is 92 years old and still plants sugarcane and beans besides taking care of fruit trees and some cattle raised collectively by the community he fosters a sense of gratitude for the wider Cerrado biome Today, campesinos like João Guimarães are the guardians of the Cerrado’s water sources in Bahia’s communal pastures they lived in the “Farther São Francisco” area where the Cerrado abuts a semiarid region and where water used to be abundant a member of the Community Association of the Clemente Communal Pasture says communal pastures were established after the arrival of agribusiness in the 1970s and 1980s “As the squatters started to be evicted from their lands they organized and began to delimit [their areas] referring to areas of common use to peasants that have been “enclosed.” Communal pastures survive through collective management of Cerrado areas. The type of farming that the campesinos practice protects water sources by preserving the soil and allowing high water absorption. The community association in Correntina received an award from the federal government for its good practices but that work is now threatened by the advance of irrigation projects and giant monocrop plantations the Grande and the São Francisco are threatened by the uncontrolled use of water in Bahia As soybean plantations multiply in the west It was against this backdrop that the 2017 uprising against Igarashi’s farm developed “The attitude of the people in west Bahia is one of critical and political awareness and the Water Uprising shows that,” says Luciana Khoury She has worked on socioenvironmental issues in the area for 20 years and points to the urgent need for a water management plan in Bahia’s far west Her views are informed by a study commissioned by the prosecutors’ office about the state of the rivers in Correntina and surrounding areas showing that the flow rates of the Arrojado and the Corrente have decreased by 15-20% in the past 13 years the state government continues to grant new water-use licenses based on data from 2007 “The data used by the government do not include the water crises we experienced in 2014 and 2015 but the criteria used for concessions are the same,” Khoury says The study identifies the source of the problem: “It is clear that irrigated farms are largely responsible for the impacts on the dynamics of the rivers.” a member of the association of communal pastures in Correntina “We used to make a living out of these waters The findings clash with those from a study sponsored by the Bahia Association of Farmers and Irrigators the main agribusiness organization in the state That study paints a scenario of water security based on the Urucuia aquifer which keeps rivers like the Tocantins and Parnaíba alive Khoury says she doesn’t believe in the “water abundance” described by that study, authored by researchers from the universities in Brazil and water regulators from Nebraska in the U.S “The licenses are granted as if we had a lot of water just because of the Urucuia I won’t even discuss groundwater because there is no [official] data on it,” she says The Bahia state government and the farmers’ association of west Bahia did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comments Conflicting views on water security have not stopped the state government from authorizing more large-scale irrigation Official records seen by Mongabay show licenses granted throughout 2020 for nearly 2 billion liters (528 million gallons) a day to be used for agriculture across west Bahia These licenses were either issued or renewed between April 1 and Nov One of the licenses was granted to Farmers Elevator do Brasil farmers that owns more than 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) in the municipalities of Formosa do Rio Preto and Luis Eduardo Magalhães right in Brazil’s soybean heartland and adjacent to Correntina In January 2020, Farmers Elevator’s authorization to collect more than 39 million liters (10 million gallons) of water a day was renewed The water is to be used “for the purpose of industrial supply and irrigation” of 600 hectares (1,500 acres) at the Canto do Rio farm near the BR-242 highway in Luís Eduardo Magalhães An heir to farmers from North Dakota, Todd Kennedy Topp started the company in Bahia in 1991, to attract Midwestern ranchers like himself with several arriving in the Cerrado to plant soybeans and other commodities Topp was also granted a license during the pandemic. On Oct. 2, the government authorized the renewal of a water-use license for more than 19 million liters (5 million gallos) to be collected “during 18 hours/day for the purposes of irrigation by central pivot” at another Farmers Elevator farm Topp and Farmers Elevator did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comments SLC Agrícola’s operations have come under scrutiny because of deforestation, fires and even cultivation of soybeans in illegally acquired lands in west Bahia But those problems have not affected its business with Cargill which continued to buy its commodities through 2020 Banner image: A Cargill silo on the Agronegócio Estrondo farm in Formosa do Rio Preto municipality Image by Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace Brazil This story was first reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and published here on our Brazil site on Dec 2021 at 9:25 AM EDTBookmarkSaveLock This article is for subscribers only.Brazilian farmer Antonio Carlos Jacobsen usually buys fertilizer a few weeks before planting his corn fields Soaring fertilizer prices are pushing him to move up purchases for the March seeding -- although it may already be too late “We were caught by surprise with these skyrocketing prices,” said the 64-year-old grower who planned to seed 1.2 million hectares on his farmland in the northeastern state of Bahia there is uncertainty whether this fertilizer will be delivered on time,” he said in an interview 2020 at 2:28 PM EDTBookmarkSaveLock This article is for subscribers only.The world’s biggest exporters of soybean meal and oil are fending off a slew of logistical hurdles as they rush to get ready for the impending harvest in Argentina For the Latin American nation’s soy industry it’s the toughest start to a harvest in recent memory Farmers and exporters are bidding to crush beans and ship tens of millions of metric tons of meal and oil at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is disrupting food-supply chains across the globe Hot and dry conditionsBloomberg Terminal over the past few weeks sped up the maturing of soybeans in parts of Mato Grosso allowing some producers to harvest the oilseed sooner than expected and replace it with corn or cotton according to the top farmer cooperative in the key producing state given a much-delayed soy planting fueled expectations that many farmers would run out of time to cultivate corn A farmer picks corn during a harvest in Correntina 2024 at 3:06 PM ESTBookmarkSaveLock This article is for subscribers only.A corn ethanol boom that reshaped Brazil’s biofuel industry is nearing an end one of the country’s largest producers of the fuel Weakness in prices is making it harder for companies to keep investing in new ethanol plants São Martinho Chief Financial Officer Felipe Vicchiato told investors Friday The company makes ethanol from sugar cane and recently started up a new corn plant but the executive said plans for expanding into corn are no longer economical