Amazonia is burning: meat consumption as the main cause

Brazil's rainforests have become a plaything of agribusiness corporations. Where fires rage today, cattle will graze tomorrow. This means that consumers in Europe also bear responsibility for the deforestation of the Amazon region.

The images of the burning rainforest in Brazil are causing concern around the world. Although the fires are raging thousands of kilometres away, the catastrophe on the other side of the Atlantic is nonetheless linked to consumption patterns in Europe. Above all, the insatiable appetite for juicy steaks and hearty pork chops is fuelling the clearing and burning of vast areas of the Amazon region.

«Of course, our behaviour also has a great deal to do with the loss of the rainforest", says Matin Qaim, Professor of Global Food Economics at the University of Göttingen in Germany. "For example, we import large quantities of soy as feed for our cattle and pigs, and the growing cultivation of soy in Brazil is contributing to rainforest deforestation.»

The Amazon region is a fascinating ecosystem and the green lung of the world, but also a gigantic reservoir of resources that stirs up greed: good money can be made in the rainforest from beef and soy, energy and gold. According to a World Bank study, farmers in the Amazon region in particular can operate far more profitably than in other regions.

Meat production explodes

According to the assessment of environmentalists farmers set the most recent fires in the Amazon region to create new pastures for their livestock or fields for soybean cultivation. As the conservation organization Greenpeace explains, already cleared forest areas are typically set alight to burn off the undergrowth and tree stumps. However, environmentalists say that Bolsonaro has created a political climate in which farmers feel encouraged to engage in ever more deforestation and slash-and-burn clearing. Because the rainy season has not yet begun, the fires continue to spread.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) attributes 80 percent of rainforest loss in the Amazon region to conversion into pastureland. In recent years, meat production in Brazil has exploded, with around 200 million cattle now living in South America's largest country. According to an analysis by the organization Foodwatch, exports have increased by more than 700 percent over the past 14 years. Today, Brazil is the world's largest beef exporter.

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What is grown on the vast pastures and fields in Brazil also ends up on plates in Europe. According to the European Commission, Brazil is the largest exporter of agricultural products to the European Union. Last year, Brazil sold agricultural products worth 14.5 billion euros to the EU. Thanks to the recently agreed free trade deal between the South American economic bloc Mercosur and the European Union, this figure could increase even further in the future.

Mercosur as a further driver

«The European Union is making itself complicit in the devastating wildfires by signing the free trade agreement with the Mercosur states", says Klemens Paffhausen, Brazil representative of the German Catholic Latin America aid organization Adveniat. "The promised lower tariffs on imports of beef and soy from South America will lead to more deforestation and more cultivated land.»

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France and Ireland are now threatening to block the Mercosur agreement in light of the massive deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest. The EU Commission also wants to use the Mercosur deal to put pressure on the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

In August 2019 alone, satellite data showed that 1’700 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest were destroyed, more than three times as much as in August 2018. Experts estimate that a total of 10’000 square kilometers of forest will be destroyed by the end of the year.

Expansion of Agricultural Land

Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is closely allied with the agricultural lobby and has loosened environmental regulations. Brazilian farmers were recently permitted to burn 20 hectares of land rather than the previous limit of 5 hectares. The authorities responsible for preventing illegal deforestation have been weakened under Bolsonaro. As a result, ever-larger areas of forest are being cleared and subsequently burned to make way for agriculture and livestock farming.

Fires Expected to Increase Further

From January to the end of August, a total of 88’816 fires were recorded in Brazil according to Inpe, more than half of them in the Amazon basin. This is the highest number since 2010, when more than 132’000 forest fires were counted throughout the entire year. Experts fear that the number of fires in the Amazon region will increase significantly further this month. According to their assessments, the peak of deforestation occurs in July, while the peak of subsequent fires occurs in September.

Prices Must Rise

Even more significant is the trade in soy. Brazil has now become the second-largest producer of the green bean. Most recently, 117 million tonnes of soybeans were harvested in the South American country. Here too, the lion's share goes to China, and even more could follow due to the trade conflict between Beijing and Washington.

To address the deforestation of rainforest for new arable or grazing land, climate researcher Richard Fuchs from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology believes consumers should be made to foot the bill. “Meat consumption must decrease,” he recently told the news agency DPA. “EU member states could impose a blanket tax on meat from animals fattened with soy from rainforest regions. This would factor in the ecological downstream costs”.»