recently traveled to the Brazilian Cerrado to report on the impacts of booming agribusiness on the savanna environment and on the traditional people living there This is the second story in a series telling what they found there Brazil — Guilherme Ferreira de Souza’s world changed forever one day in 2009 he traversed the distance from his home in a lush savanna river valley up onto the high plains mesa where his cattle grazed only to find the shrubby dry forest razed in preparation for the planting of row crops That moment has since morphed into what investigators say could be one of the biggest land grabs in Bahia state history One judge already incarcerated in the case gave a favorable decision to a mega-farm that took over lands where traditional communities had lived for generations Other evidence indicates that this same farm may have originated through a fraudulent land deal made by one of the companies that started it — the Delfin Group a Rio de Janeiro millionaire dubbed the “conqueror of western Bahia.” corn and cotton plantations known collectively as the Agronegocio Condominio Cachoeira do Estrondo is located in Brazil’s fourth largest soy producing municipality which exports a large portion of its agricultural commodities to the EU and China Known locally as “Estrondo,” the mega-farm now has extended virtually to de Souza’s doorstep Guards paid for by Estrondo have erected watchtowers and fences to block villagers from accessing their traditional lands and these armed men have reportedly repeatedly intimidated members of the seven communities that live in the valley the 400 people who have resided here their entire lives find themselves encircled by soy and cotton fields that are heavily sprayed with toxic pesticides that run off into the Rio Preto from which local residents drink near us,” de Souza told Mongabay when a reporting team visited the community in 2019 “Today there are six watchtowers around us Estrondo has even blocked them from accessing the other six small communities located farther down the valley “They do not let us pass,” de Souza told us drinking sweet coffee as the sun shone hotly down on the simple structure that serves as his kitchen and the communal gathering place for the village De Souza and his neighbors — traditional farmers and descendants of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian quilombola peoples — have fought back in court a lower court granted the seven local traditional communities their right to 43,000 hectares (106,000 acres) bordering the Estrondo estate and ordered the removal of Estrondo’s security cabins The decision was upheld in May 2018 by a Bahia state court of appeals When asked by Mongabay why Estrondo had still not complied with the court rulings the public relations agency representing Estrondo cited an excerpt from a court order written by Judge Sérgio Humberto Sampaio a municipal judge in Formosa do Rio Preto on November 27 Sampaio issued a favorable decision to Estrondo reducing the area claimed by the geraizeiros communities from 43,000 to 9,000 hectares (106,000 to 22,000 acres) Sampaio is now one of several judges and rural producers targeted in a federal police investigation dubbed “Operation Far West,” and is one of few judges to be incarcerated already recorded financial transactions of 14 million reais (US$3.3 million) linked to Sampaio between January 2013 and 2019 Of the total 7 million reais (US$1.7 million) he received only 1.7 million reais (US$402,000) were in salary payments Agronegocio Condominio Cachoeira do Estrondo has grown to be Bahia’s largest agribusiness landholding The exact size of the mega-farm is uncertain; in a Mongabay request for comment Esrondo claimed its agribusiness tenants occupied only 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) up until the recent investigation Estrondo claimed to occupy 305,000 hectares (754,000 acres) on its website — an area roughly four times the size of New York City The mega-farm encompasses 41 tenants who grow commodities mostly for export While exact numbers from Estrondo are unavailable half the soy planted in Formosa do Rio Preto and shipped to China and the European Union in what people say was an attempt to evict them from traditional pasturelands However, the dispute between Estrondo and Aldeia isn’t a local anomaly. The last report from the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) an organ of the Brazilian Catholic Church that deals with the problems of the rural poor identified 1,489 land conflicts in Brazil in 2018 mining and violence against local people — conflicts marked by murders with about one million people involved; that’s a 36% increase between 2017 and 2018 Traditional populations are the target of 73.5% of conflicts over land and water the state of Bahia alone recorded 182 rural conflicts involving 156,000 people After an hour and a half drive on well-maintained highways a dirt state highway continuously packed down by commodities-loaded 18-wheelers blasting past us BA-458 ran arrow-straight through Formosa do Rio Preto which lies at the heart of what boosters call “Brazil’s last agricultural frontier,” also dubbed Matopiba by agribusiness promoters — a farm and ranch commodities region sprawling across Maranhão and composed of 337 municipalities — some which have among the fastest rates of deforestation in Brazil The majority of soy produced in Formosa do Rio Preto is exported, according to Trase municipal-level supply chain data and China nearly 20% of all soy produced there in 2017; Brazil uses nearly 38% sourced from the Brazilian government and made rapidly available by NGO initiatives like those maintained by Trase have illuminated the formerly opaque supply chains that undergird the soy industry’s rushed expansion — an almost 500% increase over the last decade in Formosa do Rio Preto alone Nearly all that soy is grown to feed meat and dairy cattle who still remembers a time when the chapadas — the high flat Cerrado mesas — were covered in native vegetation rather than soy the pace of agribusiness encroachment has been alarming and disruptive he is descended from a mix of freed and runaway slaves peasant farmers and indigenous peoples who migrated here over many decades past He identifies most with the term geraizeiros — a legally-recognized designation for traditional people living in the sertão the backcountry Cerrado savanna northeast of the Amazon basin “My great grandfather was born and died here My mother was born here and is still alive today; she is 85 years old I was born and raised here; I’m 63 years old,” said de Souza Most traditional Cerrado people live today in the baixos were long reserved for grazing livestock and for hunting tapir The wildlife and vegetation of the higher plains are gone now “Deforestation has ended everything,” said de Souza Some of the region’s only remaining natural savanna is in the valley where de Souza lives. But even those wildlands, according to Estrondo’s website have been claimed by the agribusiness producers marked and fenced in as their “legal reserve,” — the percentage of undeveloped land that farmers in Brazil are required to preserve according to the federal Forest Code We arrived at the edge of Estrondo’s legal reserve, which started just past a rusty sign for “Alaska,” a set of dry, dusty fields being worked over by a tractor. According to the companies’ website 25% of Estrondo’s total landholdings are designated as a legal reserve 5% more than the amount Brazil’s Forest Code mandates in the region But what Estrondo’s website fails to mention is that this legal reserve doesn’t just protect local fauna and hemmed in by fences and guardhouses — people with nowhere to go and cut off from traditional livelihoods connected on both sides to many miles of electrified barbed wire A mile down the fence was the first of several guardhouses In the runup to Mongabay’s visit, Aldeia suffered harassment from Estrondo security guards, but its residents fared better than neighbors in other traditional villages. People in Cachoeira were harassed and shot at in 2019, including one shooting recorded on video. Violent threats by Estrondo guards have been reported to police and independent litigators in the state Public Ministry’s Office Formosa do Rio Preto is located more than 600 miles away from Salvador “They don’t respect anything; they don’t respect the law,” said de Souza of Estrondo’s hired enforcers “We have been abandoned by the justice system Aldeia still lacks access to its common lands for grazing for the gathering of fruits and other foods for the harvesting of golden grass to roof its homes Villagers are also experiencing serious health problems “The pesticides are killing us,” said Josino Guedes de Souza Guilherme’s son and the 28-year-old president of the Village Association the community’s sole source of water for drinking “the rain takes the pesticides down to the riverbed the large amounts of agrochemicals applied to soy during planting season cause skin rashes and other medical conditions serious questions have been raised about the mega-farm’s origins and whether Estrondo’s parent registration — the legal bedrock upon which the entire enterprise is based — may be fraudulent the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) published a book detailing major land grabbing operations in Brazil Listed in first place in Bahia was a 444,000 hectare (1.1 million acre) holding belonging to Delfin S/A Crédito Imobiliária the União de Construtoras company pledged the lands of Fazenda Estrondo as collateral to Delfin Rio SA Real Estate Credit in the late 1980s União de Construtoras defaulted and Delfin Rio enforced the guarantee In November 2019, land grabbing in western Bahia was targeted by a Federal Police investigation which has uncovered a major corruption scheme involving magistrates and officials of the Bahia State Court of Justice along with prominent lawyers and rural producers Formosa do Rio Preto officials are among those under investigation Alleged perpetrators reportedly secured the sale of court rulings that legitimized stolen land Estrondo replied to Mongabay’s queries in a 14-page missive saying in short that “information claiming that their operation was born of land grabbing and fraud is false.” Banner image caption: More than 40 families live in Aldeia the largest of the seven traditional communities located within the legal reserve claimed by Estrondo 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 […] From feeding insects to chickens to tracking produce a range of options aim to curb appetite for soya that harms the environment The biggest users are chicken producers; soya makes up around a quarter of the diet of birds It has been the cheapest source of protein poultry available to farmers since the ban on meat and bonemeal after BSE Soya remains key to producing fast-growing Soya is a smaller part of the diet of other farmed animals and appears to be easier to replace. For example, dairy farmers supplying M&S recently eliminated their use of soya replacing it with rapeseed oil and sugar beet The main sources of organic soya are China Retailers are linked through their supply chains to deforestation because they buy meat and dairy products from UK farmers who use soya. In response to pressure, they have come out with a variety of policies that attempt to limit or eliminate links with deforestation. Read moreMost of them do this by committing to ensuring that their suppliers only use “responsibly-sourced” soya, relying on a range of certification schemes to deliver on this. There is no internationally-agreed definition of responsibly- or sustainably-sourced soya. Instead it is left to individual private certification schemes such as the Roundtable on Responsible Soy which states that it guarantees zero deforestation and zero conversion in its certified soya production The UK government has agreed to introduce new rules requiring companies to prove they have checked for risks of illegal deforestation in their supply chains Companies would also be banned from sourcing commodities that have not been produced in line with the laws of countries where they originate A consultation on the proposals concluded last month 2019 shows an aerial view of an agriculture field next to a native Cerrado (savanna) in Formosa do Rio Preto - Faced with growing pressure in 2020 for Brazil to put a stop to deforestation in the Amazon the agri-food giants are increasing the checks on the origin of their products and say they are calling on the Bolsonaro government to enforce environmental legislation The recent case of Brazilian meat giant JBS accused in July 2020 by a consortium of investigative media of having illicitly sourcing cattle from ranches blacklisted for destroying the Amazon Choi Won-suk is a photojournalist at The Korea Times he also worked as a photojournalist with AFP and St graduating with a Bachelor of Journalism degree (Cum Laude) from the University of Missouri - Columbia and a Master of Arts in Photography from Ohio University - Athens Choi covered various news events such as presidential elections the 2019 North Korea-United States Hanoi Summit and 2022 Qatar World Cup Choi believes in local journalism and finds a lot of joy telling life stories of ordinary citizens in small neighborhoods That kind of output has attracted major companies such as SLC Agrícola one of the largest grain producers in Brazil The destruction was centered at the Parceiro farm in the town of Formosa do Rio Preto — itself the heart of the deforestation in the entire Cerrado was the subject of a brazen land-grabbing scheme that was investigated by law enforcers The story is illustrative of the power of agribusiness in the Brazilian savanna which has an impact across a global web of businesses and people A key player in this web is Cargill, the second-largest privately held company in the U.S., which purchased just over 25% of SLC’s output in 2019 The deforestation and fires associated with the farm did not drive Cargill away and the company confirmed to Mongabay that it still buys soybeans produced at Parceiro The company’s decisions have an impact on a huge number of consumers since it owns soybean oil brands Liza and Purilev and supplies chains like KFC and McDonald’s it is not just environmental problems that haunt SLC’s lands in Bahia Experts told Mongabay that the land titles for many farms in this region are sketchy at best — a problem that extends to the company “Traditional peoples are trapped by soybean plantations [in west Bahia] and their resistance became more difficult with the arrival of international investors,” says Carla Morsh a researcher at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) who has a Ph.D with cases of title fraud forcing large companies and investors to navigate a legal minefield there is a whole structure with several layers of illegality It’s professionalized and it includes politicians,” Morsh says The Federal Prosecution Service and the Superior Court of Justice agree the problem is dire. In a joint investigation they have raised allegations of corruption and land grabbing involving numerous properties A former partner of the fund in this business plays a prominent role in the land-grabbing case being investigated by the Brazilian authorities worth more than 19.2 million reais ($3.5 million) Ricardi was also a lead player in the land-grabbing scandal investigated by the Federal Prosecution Service According to the Superior Court of Justice he would “prepare an area within the [illegally achieved] farm” for agriculture He did this while still partnering with the U.S TIAA did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comments responsible for monitoring the National Land Management System only took action after a determination from the Brazilian Council of Justice who canceled the registration of the Parceiros land parcel The area in question remains under intense dispute between farmers in western Bahia still without a verdict on who its true owners are This is where SLC Agrícola and Cargill enter the picture Mongabay checked the boundaries of the Parceiro farm and of TIAA’s Parceiros farm SLC is growing its soybeans on illegally acquired land which is then exported worldwide by Cargill and other traders SLC Agrícola said that “only the northern and western portions [of the Parceiro farm] are currently in operation.” The areas involved in the land-grabbing scheme investigated by the Federal Prosecution Service are located precisely in that western portion The company confirmed that part of the farm is leased under a partnership with Radar S/A What happens on SLC Agrícola’s land has ramifications far beyond. Last year, one of the company’s top investors, the U.K. investment fund Odey Asset Management came under intense pressure as a result of SLC’s deforestation of the Cerrado SLC’s buyers have also come under pressure “All three companies have made zero-deforestation commitments,” according to Chain Reaction Research, which adds that “SLC Agrícola’s recent clearing [in Formosa do Rio Preto] appears to be in direct violation of the principles of these policies” — a practice that is not entirely new SLC, in turn, says that “the clearing of all areas complied with current legislation and was authorized.” Brazil’s Forest Code does allow cutting down up to 80% of native forest in farms in the Cerrado Controls are much stricter for farms in the Amazon where only 20% of a property may be cleared As a result, western Bahia has lost an area of Cerrado equivalent to nearly 10 times the size of Los Angeles (about 1.1 million hectares or 2.7 million acres) in the past 20 years Greenpeace has also raised concerns over the climate implications of soybeans grown on deforested land In late November, the NGO traced soybeans consumed in the U.K. to farms in Formosa do Rio Preto. It noted that “the revelations come at a time when the British government is debating new legislation to eliminate deforestation from the country’s supply chains.” This report was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) Banner image of a plantation in the area known as Brazil’s “soybean belt,” which includes several farms processing facilities and distribution centers The belt straddles the municipalities of Luís Eduardo Magalhães all in the Cerrado region of western Bahia state If you are the site owner (or you manage this site), please whitelist your IP or if you think this block is an error please open a support ticket and make sure to include the block details (displayed in the box below) so we can assist you in troubleshooting the issue Nearly a quarter of Brazil's territory caught fire at least once between 1985 and 2023 while 31.6 percent was influenced by human activities The Cerrado and the Amazon are the main biomes impacted by fires accounting for 86 percent of the burned area is part of a study released on Tuesday (Jun researchers can analyze the size and historical patterns of the burned areas but they cannot pinpoint the exact cause of the fires coordinator of MapBiomas Fogo and director of Science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) explained to Agência Brasil that it is possible to determine that most fires are not of natural origin This conclusion is primarily based on the fact that most fires occur during August and September the Pantanal—experience fires mainly during the dry season when electrical discharges from storms are unlikely," says Ane Alencar The MapBiomas coordinator notes that most of the burned native vegetation remains unoccupied by humans "Only a small percentage of the affected areas are primarily pastureland," she says Nearly half (46%) of the burned area is concentrated in three states: Mato Grosso The three municipalities with the highest burn rates between 1985 and 2023 were Corumbá (Mato Grosso do Sul) in the Pantanal biome followed by São Felix do Xingu (Pará) in the Amazon biome and Formosa do Rio Preto (Bahia) in the Cerrado biome The MapBiomas survey also indicates that approximately 65 percent of the area affected by fire experienced repeated burning between 1985 and 2023 an average of 18.3 million hectares were affected by fire each year Researcher Ane Alencar warns that although the Cerrado is more adapted to fires the high frequency of fires weakens the ecosystem with 44 percent of the total area burned at least once in the country located in this biome nearly half (44%) of the Cerrado's land area "It's much more difficult to stop the fire," she explains has seen 82.7 million hectares burned at least once which accounts for a fifth (19.6%) of the Amazon biome Born in Pará and a specialist in the Amazon region Ane Alencar warns of the significant threat that fires pose to forests "Forest formations are not adapted to fire; they are sensitive," she explains leaving these areas highly susceptible to a second fire This leads to a degradation process," she adds The biome most affected in proportion to its area was the Pantanal While this constitutes only 4.5 percent of the national total it represents 59.2 percent of the Pantanal biome In addition to damaging the vegetation cover which alters the environmental balance among other consequences fires are significant contributors to the greenhouse effect They release the carbon stored in the biomass into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO²) The MapBiomas researcher notes that since the early 2000s incentives for improved environmental management have helped to control fires "there has been a significant increase in both deforestation and the area burned." the increase in fires persisted due to climate change These conditions contributed to the land becoming more susceptible to the spread of fires is that in regions where deforestation decreased there was also a reduction in fires overall including burn-offs and wildfires," she notes Ane Alencar believes that the study provides valuable information which can assist authorities in formulating strategies to prevent "These data can significantly enhance our understanding of areas at higher risk of fires They can be used in accountability processes and to monitor whether climate change is indeed contributing to the increase in fires," she explains and optimizing investments for better land use," she adds.