- Brazilian Amazon states are leading an offensive against environmental regulations in the Amazon and beyond.
- The movement gained momentum in October when Brazil’s granary, Mato Grosso state, approved a bill undermining a voluntary agreement to protect the Amazon from soy expansion.
- Before Mato Grosso, other Amazon states like Acre and Rondônia had already approved bills reducing protected areas and weakening the fight against illegal mining.
- With its economy highly reliant on agribusiness, Mato Grosso is considered a successful model for other parts of the Amazon.
In effect for the past 18 years, the soy moratorium seemed established in Brazil. The voluntary agreement in which large soy traders commit to not buying soy from Amazon areas deforested after 2008 had helped to maintain the country’s reputation in international markets. According to the Brazilian Vegetable Oil Industries Association (Abiove), which gathers some of the world’s largest soy companies, this commitment contributed to a 69% reduction in deforestation until 2022.
In 2024, however, the agreement suffered an unexpected setback. In July, Rondônia state approved a law punishing its members by withdrawing their fiscal tax incentives. The biggest strike, however, came in October, when a similar law was approved in Mato Grosso. Known as “Brazil’s granary,” the state in the west-central region is the country’s largest soy, cotton, corn and beef producer.
“Our country is sovereign, and no company can break our environmental laws, which are the most restrictive in the world,” Governor Mauro Mendes said when sanctioning the new law, arguing the moratorium was undermining Brazil’s environmental legislation. A similar bill has also been filed in the Brazilian Congress, threatening the moratorium on a national level. According to The Guardian, the offensive made Abiove evaluate changes to soften the agreement — in a WhatsApp message to Mongabay, the organization’s PR person said it wouldn’t comment.
“Mato Grosso has always been a great laboratory,” said Edilene Fernandes do Amaral, the legal adviser of the civil society network Observa-MT, which advocates for environmental protection in the state, referring to controversial initiatives born in the region and replicated in other parts of Brazil.
In early January, Mato Grosso’s deputies approved a bill redefining Amazon areas, where landowners must protect 80% of the property, as Cerrado areas, where the required preservation area falls to 35%. According to Observa-MT, it could lead to deforestation in 5.2 million hectares (12.8 million acres), an area larger than Slovakia. The law was vetoed by the Governor, but the issue is not over. According to the Brazilian news outlet ((o))eco, Mendes agreed with lawmakers and agribusiness representatives to discuss alternatives to the bill.
“The law applies to the transition area between the two biomes, which is in the north of the state,” Lúdio Cabral, a Mato Grosso state deputy who opposes the environmental setbacks, told Mongabay. “This is exactly where the ‘arc of deforestation’ is, where most forest fires occur and where there are many agrarian conflicts.”
Mato Grosso soy producers are also notable critics of the European Union anti-deforestation law, fueling a campaign that managed to postpone it. The legislation forbids EU buyers from importing goods produced in recently cleared areas.
“We are absolutely at the opposite end of the global debate,” Cabral said. “And it’s a lack of intelligence. If we continue with this exploitation model, in 10 or 20 years, we will have a serious problem of water scarcity that will jeopardize agribusiness activity itself.”
State-level siege
Mato Grosso is not alone in its counter-offensive. As international markets threatened to ban Brazilian products, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration sought to restore environmental protection after four years of intentional lockdown during the tenure of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-22), which favored agribusiness and supported deforestation. Lula’s team resumed raids on the ground against environmental criminals, seized illegal cattle herds and destroyed illegal mining machinery. New legislation also made it harder to sell illegal gold, and the government increased fines against ranchers setting vegetation on fire.
As the siege increased, Amazonian states responded by passing controversial bills to undermine environmental control. Roraima and Rondônia, for example, tried to forbid agents from destroying machinery used for environmental crimes. Also in Rondônia, lawmakers and the local government are trying to scrap 11 conservation units and reduce two others.
In Acre state, a law approved in August allowed the privatization of an area approximately the size of New York City inside five Amazon conservation units. According to the Associated Press, deforestation in these areas more than tripled, thanks to the bill.
In Pará state, lawmakers and ranchers started advocating for a change in the national Forest Code to grant amnesty to all deforestation made until 2020.
The powerful agribusiness lobby was also heard loud and clear in the National Congress, which approved two proposals from the so-called Destruction Package, a set of 28 measures pushed by the agribusiness caucus.
“These proposals are being given a place they never had before,” Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a network of civil society organizations, told Mongabay. “It’s an all-out attack.”
The so-called Poison Bill, which slashes pesticide regulations, and the marco temporal (time frame) provision, which threatens the demarcation of Indigenous territories, have been signed into law, although the marco temporal bill is still under discussion in the Supreme Court.
Other equally harmful bills may still be approved, like the one that withdraws protection on non-forestry vegetation and another one reducing the mandatory preservation area in rural properties, the so-called legal reserve.
“It really is a very negative scenario,” Araújo said. “Let’s hope that parliamentarians take a little more responsibility in what they vote on when it comes to protecting socioenvironmental rights.”
An Amazonian dream
For many decades, Mato Grosso has been the destiny of small and impoverished peasants from other parts of Brazil — especially from the south — in search of larger chunks of land. The real agricultural revolution, however, happened in the 1980s, when large ranchers entered the scene counting on the government’s technical assistance to improve soil conditions.
Today, Mato Grosso’s agriculture is based on expensive machinery, extensive use of pesticides and voluminous financing, with an economic strength that overflows to the political arena. “In the main cities of Mato Grosso and the state government, it is impossible to win an election without the support of agribusiness,” political scientist João Edson, who lives in the state’s capital, Cuiabá, told Mongabay.
Thanks to agribusiness, whole cities developed from zero, and Sinop, known as the “capital of the north,” is the most symbolic. “Sinop is a center for health, education and business. The airport has daily direct flights to São Paulo and Brasília, which are always full,” Edson said.
These attributes make Mato Grosso a role model to other Amazonian states. “The municipalities in the north of Mato Grosso are our references,” Novo Progresso’s mayor, Gelson Dill, told Mongabay in his office in mid-October. “In Sorriso, Sinop, and Lucas do Rio Verde, the quality of life is very good because of soy, corn and agricultural production. We want that.”
However, people coming to Mato Grosso for wealth are often unqualified to work in the state’s high-tech crops and face high living expenses. “At farm parties, it’s very common for the ranch’s airport to have 60, 70 aircraft parked. The farmers use the planes as if they were their cars,” Edson said. “But if you go to the city’s outskirts, the worker rides a bus.”
Mato Grosso’s development model also comes with a high environmental cost. The state is the only one in Brazil harboring three biomes — the Amazon, the Pantanal wetlands and Cerrado savanna — but is usually the second in the deforestation ranking and the first in the number of fire outbreaks.
“The agribusiness and monoculture model has expanded from the Cerrado and advanced into the forest and the edges of the Pantanal, producing severe environmental damage,” the state deputy Cabral told Mongabay.
Still, Mato Grosso usually maintains a respectable environmental profile, partly due to a more progressivist wing of agribusiness represented by large corporations. Soy moratorium ratifiers, for example, are highly dependent on international financing and more susceptible to environmental scandals.
“These companies have a more industrial model,” political scientist João Edson said. “Agribusiness is just one of their businesses, which also includes ports and other companies outside the country.”
According to him, however, this group has been facing sharp resistance from a more reactionary part of agribusiness. Strongly linked to former President Bolsonaro, it is composed of rural producers gathered in the state’s soybean and corn producers association, Aprosoja, and Mato Grosso’s agricultural and livestock federation, Famato. “The emergence of Bolsonaro ended up creating this rupture,” Edson said.
Amaral, from Observa-MT, said Mato Grosso has a well-structured environment secretary, especially compared with other Amazonian states. “Transparency in the environmental area is also greater, and monitoring is carried out using advanced technologies.”
However, much of this reputation is supported by legislative changes designed to legalize illegal practices — like the one that magically “transformed” Amazon areas into Cerrado ones.
Amaral also points to the conciliation sessions promoted by Mato Grosso’s administration, in which ranchers fined for illegal deforestation may be totally discharged or receive up to 90% discount on their environmental fines.
“They are legalizing everything. First with the dismantling of legislation, bringing what is illegal into legality, and second with the conciliation task force,” she said.
Banner Image: Known as Brazil’s granary, Mato Grosso is the country’s top producer of soy, corn, cotton and beef. Image @ Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace.
Meet the think tank behind the agribusiness’ legislative wins in Brazil
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