Brazil’s environmentally destructive cattle ranching industry

Brazil’s environmentally destructive cattle ranching industry

In the Amazon rainforest cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation. This is then followed by the cutting and burning of forests to convert land into crops for family farming and finally by the deployment of grain crops by the agro industry.

Of all the Amazonian countries, Brazil has the largest cattle industry which is still rapidly growing. Indeed, the number of Brazilian cattle has increased from 147 million in 1990 to around 200 million in 2007. Unfortunately, 83 percent of this growth has occurred in the Amazon rainforest as can be seen in figure 1. The cattle industry is unfortunately associated with numerous environmental problems such as the release of high amounts of Greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, loss of species, water cycle disturbance, soil erosion and more. In this blog post I will examine some of the environmental consequences of this highly destructive industry in Brazil.

Figure 1: Herd production trends in Brazil.

 As mentioned earlier, Brazil’s ranching industry is responsible for a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions: 60 to 80% of all GHG emissions caused by land use change in Brazil. These enormous emissions can be attributed to the fact that cattle ranching occupies more land than any other agricultural activity in the Brazilian Amazon.

Consequently, this business emits large amounts of GHG in two major ways. Firstly, 205 Million metric tons of CO₂ is released through the deforestation itself: by the burning of trees and by the loss of the forest’s carbon sink ability. Secondly, an additional  256 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents of emissions is released through direct ranching activities. The two direct major contributors of GHG emissions on cattle farms are enteric fermentation (which accounted for 74% of total GHG emissions from cattle farms) and manure management (accounting for 22% of total GGH emissions from cattle farms) as shown in figure 2.  

 Figure 2: sources of GHG emissions

 Deforestation caused by the cattle industry is another major environmental problem.

Over the past 40 years up to the 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down. In Brazil, 75% of all deforestation was due to the meat industry. Unfortunately, this leads to a destructive negative feedback.  Indeed, the Amazon rainforest produces half of its rainfall through the moisture released by vegetation into the atmosphere. Removing these vital trees will inevitably contribute to an increasing frequency of droughts. More droughts in turn will lead to further plant and biodiversity loss. Furthermore, trees and other vegetation are also of essential importance in filtering polluted water and prevent it from running off into and contaminating streams. Changing this precious dynamic equilibrium can have catastrophic environmental consequences as the Amazon River basin has the most diverse fish fauna on Earth

The Amazon’s water cycle is also impacted through the direct activities of ranching. Indeed, connectivity and flows in smaller tributaries have been affected by these land use changes. Stream impoundments created to support cattle ranching and roads in the Xingu watershed have also resulted in elevated steam temperatures extending at least 2.4km downstream.

Not only did stream temperature increase, the stream network length decreased as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Major drainages of the Curua-Una basin impacted by impoundments.

The changing connectivity and flows of these smaller tributaries can have massive environmental consequences with the main one being loss of biodiversity.  This can be explained by the Landscape connectivity theory that states that more connected environments benefit from higher biodiversity as species can move freely from one area to another during their life cycle to find food resources, reproduce etc… In short, the Brazilian cattle industry is a leading cause of Amazonian habitat fragmentation which can lead to habitat and biodiversity loss.

Yet even though there has already been catastrophic damage, the Brazilian government is trying to change this around. This can be seen through the increasing amount of farms participating in sustainability programs. On average, these farms resulted in 18% less GHG emissions than regular neighbouring farms. Furthermore, it appears that the longer a farm is on a sustainable program the more environmentally friendly it is. Indeed,  farms participating in sustainability programs for more than 2 years had 35% lower GHG emissions per kg of beef than their peers. This seems to suggest that it may take a while for theses farms and programs to reach their full benefits.

Not only has there been initiatives to reduce GHG emissions associated with the meat industry, there has also been efforts to reduce deforestation. Recent reports from many NGO’s such as Green Peace showed that major meat and leather brands were selling products sources from ranches implicated in illegal deforestation. They also showed that the Brazilian National Development bank was the main funder of the rapidly expanding slaughterhouses in the Amazon. All these discoveries have put pressure on Brazilian meatpackers and international retailers. Consequently, they have announced new policies against deforestation in their supply chains.

In conclusion, Brazil’s cattle industry has many negative environmental impacts. It is associated with very high levels of illegal deforestation, GHG emissions and biodiversity loss. Only recently has there been any major efforts to revert this situation through environmentally friendly policies and programs. For now, we can only hope that these changes get implemented swiftly to stop this wide scale destruction.