Soy production is a booming business in Brazil’s Cerrado region.
Soy production is a booming business in Brazil’s Cerrado region. But urgent action is needed to halt its growth and prevent the industry destroying the area’s rich biodiversity, researchers warn.
A moratorium aimed at curbing the conversion of untouched parts of the Amazon rainforest into soy farmland has been in place since 2006, agreed by civil society groups, agribusinesses and the Brazilian government.
However, no such protection was afforded to the Cerrado, a biodiversity hot spot that stores 13.7 billion metric tonnes of carbon and covers some of Brazil's largest river basins.
Indeed, the strategy, while helping to slow down deforestation in the Amazon, shifted the problem to the so-called Brazilian savannah, where the conversion of native vegetation to grain crops has greatly increased in recent years.
Read more at SciDev.Net
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