Brazil Farm Sales to EU Imperiled by Deforestation, Report Finds

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s soybean and beef trade with Europe is being threatened by the industry’s remaining ties to forest destruction, according to a report released Thursday.

European purchases of Brazilian soybeans may have been indirectly responsible for 58.3 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions between 2009 and 2017 from both legal and illegal deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado regions, according to the study published in Science magazine.

The European Union’s emissions-deforestation link is expected to increase as a result of the Mercosur-EU agreement and the U.S.-China trade accord, according to the study by researchers including at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, University of Bonn, Stockholm Environment Institute and University of Wisconsin.

“If implemented, these agreements will increase EU demand for Brazilian products because of lower tariffs and to fill in the gap as U.S. exports to the EU could be redirected to China,” the authors wrote.

The study drew from Brazil’s rural registers, cattle transport permits, environmental traceability systems and geo-spatial data to show deforestation’s link to exports. It accessed data from 362,000 Amazon properties and 452,000 in the Cerrado.

It found that 2% of Amazon and Cerrado properties are responsible for 62% of all potentially illegal deforestation. About 20% of soy exports and at least 17% of beef shipments from in those areas to the EU may be contaminated with illegal forest destruction, according to the report.

While only 1% of newly deforested areas is being planted with soy in the Amazon and 5% in the Cerrado, even farmers complying with the soy moratorium are clearing forest for other crops in their land, the researchers found.

The European Union is stepping up efforts to ensure agricultural imports don’t come from recently deforested land, and China may follow suit, the study warned.

So far in Brazil “there is a strong emphasis on private certification schemes that are costly, lack transparency, and encompass only specific farms and hence a small part of the sector,” wrote the authors, suggesting a “national and public monitoring system” to enforce environmental compliance.

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