The climate change situation has turned the collective environmentalist stare toward the Amazon forest, where thousands of fires continue to burn the forest, blackening the skies. In this case, climate change is not the culprit, because most of the fires have been set intentionally to clear the land for agriculture practices. But by releasing the large amounts of carbon stored in the rainforest, the fires are a climate crisis of a different sort. Much care has been made about climate activists exaggerating the scope of the fires, and it is true that the prevalence of this year’s fire is only slightly above average. But the outcry stems more from the fact that Brazil’s leaders, has pledged to scale back environmental regulations in an effort to open more of the Amazon to development. And there is some evidence that locals have taken that as a sign that they can set illegal fires this year without fear of retribution. In a sense, the fires have simply made a momentary media sight, out of the longstanding issue of deforestation. Whether by fire/chainsaw, that has everything to do with agriculture. More specifically, it has to do with the global appetite for beef.
What Do People Grow in the Amazon?
There are some sustainable agricultural endeavors in the Amazon forest, such as tapping rubber trees and harvesting native foods, cattle ranching and soybean production are by far the biggest forms of agricultural land use in Amazon.
How Does this Contribute to Fires and Deforestation?
Soy fields and cow pastures require the removal of trees, of course, and the easiest way is fire method. Farmers also use fire to keep trees and shrubs from returning to their fields. But experts point out that the bigger issue is that this form of agriculture is incompatible with the Amazonian environment. The soil is thin and quickly depleted by farming and grazing practices imported from temperate climes. Yields quickly decrease after a few years, leading poor farmers to clear more land simply to survive instead to change their farming practices.
Who Are the Grileiros?
Grileiro, means “land grabber” in Portuguese. These are people who go into pure forest and clear it for the purposes of claiming ownership. If you can show that you have been using the land, it is possible to gain ownership through a form of squatter’s rights, often selling the land to farmers once they have done so. This would never fly in more developed countries, but because the Amazon is such a vast and largely unpoliced frontier, and because the land registry is notoriously corrupt, Grilagem (“land grabbing”) is a common and profitable form of organized crime in Amazon.
What We Can Do?
We have to Buy local beef, and pressure the international agribusiness community to create more transparent supply chains to ensure that their beef products are not sourced in a way that contributes to deforestation anywhere in the world.
Agriculture 