Soy Expansion, Environment, and Human Development: An Analysis across Brazilian Municipalities

Ecology and Society, 2011

Cultivation of soy for human and animal food has been growing rapidly in Brazil in the last thirty years, and the recent emergence of a biodiesel market in Brazil has stimulated this further. Soy occupies large parts of the Cerrado biome and has now reached the Amazon, and concerns have been raised about both the environmental and social impacts of this. This study combined data from literature with interview surveys in three areas in the soy belt: Sorriso, in the Cerrado; Guarantã do Norte and Alta Floresta, in the transitional zone between the Cerrado and the Amazon biome, and Santarém, which is fully in the Amazon biome, to understand these impacts from the perspective of the soy farmers, the other farmers, and the laborers. From the literature it is clear that at least 80% of the direct deforestation is due to clearance for cattle rearing, and we estimate that 13-18% is due to soy, although less than 6% can be attributed to biodiesel, since most soy is used for other products. In the Amazon biome, the Forest Law, the Soy Moratorium, improved monitoring and the general unsuitability of the land have combined to keep soy cultivation at a low level so far despite the construction of a port at Santarém, which makes this area much more accessible. In the site in the transition area little soybean is cultivated due to unsuitable configuration of land and to transportation costs. In the Cerrado, however, soy has proved itself to be a viable alternative to timber, as well as replacing grazing, which is most likely causing indirect deforestation elsewhere, although this effect could not be measured in this study. More than half of the soy farmers interviewed claimed to have converted grazing land as opposed to forest, although grazing land often contains some secondary forest as well as grassland. In the transition areas, the expectation of farmers is that when transport costs fall due to road improvements, soy will be cultivated in an integrated rotation system on grazing land, improving degraded pastures. Soy farmers, laborers and non-soy farmers all have a positive view of the social impacts of soy, borne out by the fact that average incomes in Sorriso, where there has been an enormous increase in soy production over the last 20 years, are 4.6 times higher than those in Guarantã do Norte, which is still dominated by cattle rearing. The PNPB program, which aims for social inclusion of small family farmers in the production of biofuel feedstock, has succeeded in forcing large soy purchasing companies to assist essentially uneconomic farms and has enabled some small farmers in agrarian reform settlements to profit. However, we found evidence of plots changing hands and being consolidated by farmers with greater skills and capital, resulting in incipient class formation. Moreover, the companies are selective in their choice of agrarian settlement, and were not operating in those in which land holdings are very small or where the terrain is too broken up for large-scale mechanization.

The goal in the following article is to understand how the soy sector, as part of export-oriented agriculture, has evolved through the different developmental stages in the Brazilian economic history of the 20th and early 21st century, and how the country´s shifting insertion into the global market has positioned interests linked to this sector, in relation the political hegemony of the day. The pragmatic nature of the policies addressing export agriculture is initially traced from the early developmentalism, through the birth of soy cultivation in the latter half of the century, towards the day today, when this single crop has come to hold an extremely significant position within Brazilian exports; a position which has had strong repercussions within the political sphere. A strong emphasis is laid upon the structural transformation of the Brazilian economy in the 1990´s and the new panorama which its internationalization has created for the growth of the soy sector, both during the Cardoso and the Lula administration. Different developmentalist visions, both in their historical conceptualizations and in their presence within the contemporary political scenario through a neo-developmentalist orientation, are synthesized with significant developments within export-agriculture, in order to understand how they in praxis have come to concede a favorable political positioning of rural bourgeoisie. It thereby assumes the character of a historical analysis of the political economy of agricultural policies, with a particular focus upon the evolution of the soy sector. The article concludes that Brazils historical positioning within the global economic scenario has at the most, made it possible to mitigate the political influence of export-agriculture, which has been a constantly significant factor, restricting the possibilities for social inclusion of destitute rural segments and exacerbating the sub-ordinate positioning as a raw material exporter. The “long perspective” which this paper operates with, derives from the perception of the need to understand the profound development which the soy expansion in Brazil during recent decades has constituted, by tracing the policies affecting this sector below the imperatives posed by the structural transformations of the Brazilian economy.

Remote Sensing, 2022

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Applied Geography, 2014

Article history: Available online Keywords: Land use and land cover change modeling Land use displacement Policy regulations Panel regression model Indirect land use change a b s t r a c t

Environmental Conservation, 2001

Soybeans represent a recent and powerful threat to tropical biodiversity in Brazil. Developing effective strategies to contain and minimize the environmental impact of soybean cultivation requires understanding of both the forces that drive the soybean advance and the many ways that soybeans and their associated infrastructure catalyse destructive processes. The present paper presents an up-to-date review of the advance of soybeans in Brazil, its environmental and social costs and implications for development policy. Soybeans are driven by global market forces, making them different from many of the land-use changes that have dominated the scene in Brazil so far, particularly in Amazonia. Soybeans are much more damaging than other crops because they justify massive transportation infrastructure projects that unleash a chain of events leading to destruction of natural habitats over wide areas in addition to what is directly cultivated for soybeans. The capacity of global markets to absorb additional production represents the most likely limit to the spread of soybeans, although Brazil may someday come to see the need for discouraging rather than subsidizing this crop because many of its effects are unfavourable to national interests, including severe concentration of land tenure and income, expulsion of population to Amazonian frontier, and gold-mining, as well as urban areas, and the opportunity cost of substantial drains on government resources. The multiple impacts of soybean expansion on biodiversity and other development considerations have several implications for policy: (1) protected areas need to be created in advance of soybean frontiers, (2) elimination of the many subsidies that speed soybean expansion beyond what would occur otherwise from market forces is to be encouraged, (3) studies to assess the costs of social and environmental impacts associated with soybean expansion are urgently required, and (4) the environmental-impact regulatory system requires strengthening, including mechanisms for commitments not to implant specific infrastructure projects that are judged to have excessive impacts.

Advances in Economics and Business

We analyzed the impact of the National Program for Production and Use of Biodiesel (PNPB) over some soybean variables such as productivity, price received and wages paid among soybean family farming units in Brazil (from 2003-2012). The empirical strategy includes first identified "poles" of biodiesel production, and then uses a difference in differences model to estimate effects over time between soybean producing municipalities considered as a PNPB biodiesel production pole (treatment) and other soybean producing municipalities (control) not producing biodiesel. The results indicate that PNPB does not appear to be closely related to soybean productivity changes. However, the PNPB appears to be positively associated with average incomes and wages, suggesting that the PNPB may have helped support rural economic development in municipalities with strong social seal participation.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

Fundação pública vinculada ao Ministério do Planejamento, Orçamento e Gestão, o IPEA fornece suporte técnico e institucional às ações governamentais, possibilitando a formulação de inúmeras políticas públicas e programas de desenvolvimento brasileiro, e disponibiliza, para a sociedade, pesquisas e estudos realizados por seus técnicos.

Land Use Policy, 2013

Soybean production has become a significant force for economic development in Brazil. It has also received considerable attention from environmental and social non-governmental organizations as a driver of deforestation and land consolidation. While many researchers have examined the impacts of soybean production on human and environmental landscapes, there has been little investigation into the economic and institutional context of Brazilian soybean production or the relationship between soy yields and planted area. This study examines the influence of land tenure, land use policy, cooperatives, and credit access on soy production in Brazil. Using county level data we provide statistical evidence that soy planted area and yields are higher in regions where cooperative membership and credit levels are high, and cheap credit sources are more accessible. This result suggests that soybean production and profitability will increase as supply chain infrastructure improves in the Cerrado and Amazon biomes in Brazil. The yields of competing land uses, wheat, coffee, and cattle production and a complementary use, corn production, also help to determine the location of soybean planted area in Brazil. We do not find a significant relationship between land tenure and planted area or land tenure and yields. Soy yields decline as transportation costs increase, but planted area as a proportion of arable land is highest in some of the areas with very high transportation costs. In particular, counties located within Mato Grosso and counties within the Amazon biome have a larger proportion of their arable, legally available land planted in soy than counties outside of the biome. Finally, we provide evidence that soy yields are positively associated with planted area, implying that policies intending to spare land through yield improvements could actually lead to land expansion in the absence of strong land use regulations. While this study focuses on Brazil, the results underscore the importance of understanding how supply chains influence land use associated with cash crops in other countries.

Soybeans represent a recent and powerful threat to tropical biodiversity in Brazil. Developing effective strategies to contain and minimize the environmental impact of soybean cultivation requires understanding of both the forces that drive the soybean advance and the many ways that soybeans and their associated infrastructure catalyse destructive processes. The present paper presents an up-to-date review of the advance of soybeans in Brazil, its environmental and social costs and implications for development policy. Soybeans are driven by global market forces, making them different from many of the land-use changes that have dominated the scene in Brazil so far, particularly in Amazonia. Soybeans are much more damaging than other crops because they justify massive transportation infrastructure projects that unleash a chain of events leading to destruction of natural habitats over wide areas in addition to what is directly cultivated for soybeans. The capacity of global markets to absorb additional production represents the most likely limit to the spread of soybeans, although Brazil may someday come to see the need for discouraging rather than subsidizing this crop because many of its effects are unfavourable to national interests, including severe concentration of land tenure and income, expulsion of population to Amazonian frontier, and gold-mining, as well as urban areas, and the opportunity cost of substantial drains on government resources. The multiple impacts of soybean expansion on biodiversity and other development considerations have several implications for policy: (1) protected areas need to be created in advance of soybean frontiers, (2) elimination of the many subsidies that speed soybean expansion beyond what would occur otherwise from market forces is to be encouraged, (3) studies to assess the costs of social and environmental impacts associated with soybean expansion are urgently required, and (4) the environmental-impact regulatory system requires strengthening, including mechanisms for commitments not to implant specific infrastructure projects that are judged to have excessive impacts.

In the Cerrado, the expansion of soybean cultivation since the 1990s has coincided with the strengthening of environmental regulations. We analyze how the two main environmental policies – Protected Areas and the Forest Code – have played out at the ground level in western Bahia state. These policies in Cerrado have not been designed to curb the expansion of this agricultural frontier. These norms have, on the contrary, accommodated this expansion because the way environmental managers selectively choose environmental problems and publicize them through specific information systems depreciates traditional fire-dependent production systems. These ‘politics of selection’ are likely to increase competition for resources in the margins of soybean agriculture, which is where traditional populations have now become confined.

2019

This dissertation is designed to explore the lamentable destruction that is taking place in the Amazon rainforest and further conduct an analysis with the aim of evaluating if abiding the Soy Moratorium of 2006 had any impact in curbing deforestation during the post-period of inception, 2006. The SoyM is a voluntary agreement purposing to hinder the demolition of forests related to soy plantation; this contract solely applies to the Amazon biome and calls all companies operating in the supply chain of the soy commodity to cease trading soybean resourced from deforested areas effectively after July 24, 2006. In order to discover the impact of the programme, we formulate a research question as follows, "did the Soy moratorium caused a reduction in deforestation in the Amazon biome?" That is to say, do companies that signed the policy truthfully adhere the principle and contribute in lessening deforestation? This question initiates the path to discover whether the Amazon biome experience less deforestation compared to neighbouring biomes following companies' signage of the voluntary agreement. We investigate the entire Amazon biome encompassing 177 municipalities and use 206 municipalities from the Cerrado biome as a control, which are located at the geographical border between the two biomes: a total of 383 municipalities. This paper covers a time span of 14 years, from 2003 to 2016, and therefore the longitudinal dataset contains 5362 observations for each variable of interest. We employed a difference-indifferences approach, with both municipality and year fixed effect, to examine if the SoyM have generated a genuine causal effect in decreasing both soy and territorial deforestation in the Amazon biome. Applying mentioned strategic approach, we acquire two different results. First, a general broad approach, conducted on the assumption of the Cerrado biome as a control factor, produces an insignificant impact of the SoyM. Whereas, applying a more specific model, which also consider the role of signatory companies in a given municipality, the empirical results suggest that the SoyM had a significant causal effect in decreasing soy deforestation and territorial deforestation as well, in the Amazon biome. Acknowledgments: We would like to thank our Supervisor Lassi Ahlvik for his relentless consultation and his remarkable institutional enlightenment. Additionally, we would like to thank Toby Gardner (SEI) and Ben Ayre (Global Canopy) for their assistance and support in suppling pivotal data. Further, we would also like to treasure Professor Torfinn Harding and Professor Aline Bütikofer for their valuable time and conceptual insightfulness. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.

The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2015

Soy is often perceived as a typical example of a homogenous capitalist agricultural model that is responsible for ecological damage and social conflicts. But this monolithic perception of soy production can be challenged: more than 30 percent of the soy producers in Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) are family farmers. In this contribution, we study soy production, the soy producers and their institutional environment from an actor-oriented perspective. We have uncovered different farming styles behind soy production: the colonial farmer, the niche farmer and the entrepreneurial farmer. The farming styles differ from each other not only in the farming system, but also in attitudes (for example, towards the forest). We found that the institutional environment and the technology are mainly focused on the entrepreneurial farmer. However, also, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) neglect the existence of small-scale soy producers. These results have several repercussions for further analysis of this problematic crop and how it can shift towards a more sustainable agricultural production model as small-scale farmers might produce soy more sustainably. 1 The Cerrado is the region south of the Amazon, which used to be a vast area without potential for agricultural production. The region, which represents 23 percent of Brazilian land, is an ancient biome characterized by rich biodiversity .

Caderno de Geografia, 2020

In recent decades, soybean has become one of the most important agricultural food crops worldwide. Brazil has been expanding its share in this market, especially since the 2000s when the soybean became its largest export in volume and occupied most of the farming land in the country. That occurred not only due gains in productivity but also through the expansion of mechanized farming into “new land” of the Brazilian Cerrado and Amazon biomes incentivized by countless public policies. The mid-north portion of the state of Mato Grosso greatly contributed to soybean reaching such position, particularly after the 1990s, when the crop experienced a boom in its expansion. As reported in several studies, the crop is predominantly developed in large agricultural enterprises. However, the areas where expansion is ongoing feature various agents – small farmers, squatters, workers, and agrarian reform settlers – who move to these “new lands” and take part in the process of social-ecological tr...

Geoforum, 2014

This paper examines Argentina's agro-export strategy for socioeconomic development based on the adoption and expansion of genetically modified (GM) soy. The modelo sojero a model based on large scale mechanized production of GM soy, is widely praised at home and abroad and used as an example of ''success'' for other poor countries on the brink of adopting GM biotechnologies for socioeconomic development. In this work I interrogate and contextualize this dominant representation of the success associated with Argentina's soy boom. Indeed, in terms of economic growth Argentina's transition to GM soy has been a success. However the GM-induced soybean boom is illusory when other factors are taken into consideration, most importantly its impact on socioenvironmental dynamics. Thus, I argue that there is a fundamental conflict between the narrative of ''success'' of the Argentinean GM soy boom and socio-ecological sustainability. After an introduction, section two looks at the historical context of GM soy adoption in Argentina and shows the trend of expansion of production since the adoption of the new GM biotechnology. Section three explores the socio-environmental impact of the GM soy-based agrarian transformation in Argentina. Section four looks at the current context of the Argentinean soybean boom. Thus, it focuses on Argentina's current domestic political economy, particularly the Kirchners' National-Popular model. I argue that the GM soy-based agro-export model as currently configured in Argentina is a socially and ecologically unsustainable model of national development.

Land

Agricultural systems are heterogeneous across temporal and spatial scales. Although much research has investigated farm size and economic output, the synergies and trade-offs across various agricultural and socioeconomic variables are unclear. This study applies a GIS-based approach to official Brazilian census data (Agricultural Censuses of 1995, 2006, and 2017) and surveys at the municipality level to (i) evaluate changes in the average soybean farm size across the country and (ii) compare agricultural and socioeconomic outcomes (i.e., soybean yield, agricultural production value, crop production diversity, and rural labor employment) relative to the average soybean farm size. Statistical tests (e.g., Kruskal–Wallis tests and Spearman’s correlation) were used to analyze variable outcomes in different classes of farm sizes and respective Agricultural Censuses. We found that agricultural and socioeconomic outcomes are spatially correlated with soybean farm size class. Therefore, bas...