A Brazilian Farm Success Story Protecting the Forest

By Vicente Bissoni Neto:  Rondonopolis, Mato Grosso, Brazil

Brazil has more trees than any country except Russia—but when our huge forests make the news, it’s usually because of “deforestation.”

My nation and its Amazon region are so incomprehensibly big that it’s almost impossible to know what’s really going on, even as the government tries to generate data and the media posts stories. Despite this, I welcome the recent news that deforestation in my country recently hit a five-year low.

What’s missing from many popular accounts is how much farmers like me are doing to defend Brazil’s forests and promote biodiversity. The truth is that while many assume that we’re a part of the problem, farmers are in fact a key to the solution.

Our farm is a multi-generation family business with a 48-year history in the southern state of Mato Grosso, which borders Paraguay. The region is a transition zone that mixes woodlands with a tropical savannah known as the Cerrado. We are blessed with rich soil as well as amazing plant and animal diversity.

We grow corn and soybeans and raise livestock on thousands of hectares. We’re also a transportation company with about 300 trucks and sales of diesel gas.

Every single day, we strive to sustainably produce as much food as possible from the fields we work. Because of modern technologies like GM and precise mechanization, we’re enjoying the biggest yields in the history of agriculture.

This is a global success story: Never have farmers been more productive than they are today. We’re growing more food on less land than ever before. Nothing matters more to the cause of conservation than to continue improving.

On our farm, we’ve adopted no-till, which keeps the soil fertile, protects it from erosion, and enhances biodiversity. We use crop-protection tools to defeat weeds, pests, and disease. We also have a strategy of crop-pasture integration that allows our crops and cattle to work together and get the most out of the land through sustainable intensification.

Now we’re starting to establish a reforestation program that will permit us to issue carbon credits to the market.

Each of these choices makes Brazil’s forests safer.

For as much as we do to get the most out of our land while we protect the environment, Brazil could do better. We still lack a lot of the basic infrastructure that farmers elsewhere take for granted. More paved roads would reduce our fuel consumption and the emissions associated with it. An expansion of 4G networks would encourage the use of the best and latest technologies in our fields.

This is beyond the ability of one farm to accomplish. It takes a collective effort, led by a government committed to action.

A different kind of inaction also threatens Brazil’s forests: the government’s bureaucratic inefficiencies. Getting approvals for preservation zones and legal reserves can take a decade.

The first step in the complicated ordeal is when a farmer submits an application. Then comes a study based on satellite imagery and site visits, followed by environmental assessments that can order preservations on as little as 35 percent of the land or as much as 80 percent of it. Next there’s a long period of negotiations that involve questions of deforestation, reforestation, and compensation.

By the way, this is done mostly by paperwork. The agency in charge of these matters still does not have an adequate computer system.

The resulting chaos creates many opportunities for illegal operations to break the law—and contributes to the deforestation that the government says it wants to stop.

My own farm obeys the law. We play by the rules, even when we find them frustrating. People who refuse to do the same aren’t true farmers. They are criminals and should be treated as such. We have criminals in all areas of society, of course, from the car industry and the banks to the government itself.

Brazil is home to about one-eighth of the world’s forests. I’m one of many farmers who would like to keep it this way—and we will if the government and the media treat us as partners rather than as enemies.

We’re ready to collaborate.

Vicente Bissoni Neto is part of a family run business, Botuvera Group, in Rondonopolis, Mato Grosso State, Brazil.  Initially founded as a transport company, the farm produces soybeans and corn, runs a beef cattle operation and sells diesel for other producers.  Vicente is a member of the Global Farmer Network. This column originates at www.globalfarmernetwork.org.