Beef's Role in Amazon Deforestation

A picture I took of the typical Brazilian cattle ranch. That small shack is the rancher's house.
When beginning the writing of this article, I really had no idea where to start. I didn’t expect to learn much about agriculture when I embarked on my trip to Brazil. I certainly didn’t expect to learn as much as I did. I feel I now have a better grasp on just how dangerous deforestation is, and more importantly what causes it, and how to fix the problem.

Before this trip, I had no experience with deforestation in the rainforest; only what I’d researched. On one hand, there was Cowspiracy, claiming deforestation was caused solely by greed for animal products, and applied this logic to say that simply cutting animal products out of one’s diet would eliminate the problem. On the other hand, many in the agriculture community in developed nations like the U.S. and the E.U. claimed that it was a vicious cycle of clearing land for cash crops like corn and rice, which then depleted the soil and caused more forest to be “Slashed and burned.” I came down on the side of cash crops being the cause, and maintained that animal products and meat (particularly beef) were not to blame; poverty was. Information I’d obtained from Nasa supported this position.

Unfortunately, after my visit to the Amazon Rainforest, I’ve come to the conclusion that Cowspiracy is more right in this aspect than most in the ag community think.

No, I’m not suggesting you go vegan.  In fact, vegans from developed countries aren’t making a hill of beans in the grand scheme of things when it comes to deforestation. About the only thing you as an American can do is buy as many Brazil nuts as you can.

Photos I took of Brazil nut trees

To understand the unique problem of Amazonion deforestation, one must get a full idea of the situation. Without a simple grasp at the very least of Brazilian culture, one cannot hope to understand the root of the problem. To the Brazilians, the concept of land ownership looks very different. You can read this from the comfort of your office chair or even from your bedroom with air conditioning and fresh sheets and look at the issue of deforestation with entirely the wrong perspective because you are used to visiting a lake or river and not being allowed to go onto the banks of it because someone owns that land. Not so in Brazil.

From what I observed, the land belongs to everyone. I know that’s not quite true, but the wilderness of Brazil is massive, and not entirely explored, even now in 2018. As a result, people make their homes wherever they can. From what I understand, the government incentivizes this. The top 1% of Brazilians own something like 75% of the land, according to my research. This results in vast swathes of jungle that are so massive no one could possibly make use of all of it. So impoverished people build houses in it, and if they’ve lived there long enough, the government grants them the land around their house and takes it away from the land owner. To counteract this, the wealthy landowners clear forest to develop it, and they get to keep more of their land, because the Brazilian government can’t award “developed” land to peasants. This is one part of the problem.

Another problem is the nature of rainforest soil. Despite what you might think, it isn’t fertile at all. This is because of the tropical climate. Rather than being divided into Summer, Winter, Fall, and Spring as our seasons are, their seasons are simply Rainy and Dry. It’s hot year around. In our climate, organic matter decomposes only during the summer. This means that all the organic matter that falls during the rest of the year simply accumulates. During the summer, it decomposes into a natural pile of compost known as “hummus” that can be up to a foot thick and makes the soil fertile. In rainforests, organic matter decomposes year round. The plants never allow the nutrients from it to accumulate more than a few millimeters. I noticed this when I was hiking in the forest. The ground is squishy and springy like a sponge. Your foot literally sinks into the piles of dead leaves, and there are mushrooms and other fungi everywhere. The soil never develops a layer of hummus, and as a result is very poor in vital nutrients. To get around this, rainforest plants, including trees, have very shallow root systems. In fact, there were numerous fallen trees I encountered on my trip, and our guide said that many times when one tree falls, others fall around it because the roots are too shallow to stand up to high winds.

An example of a fallen tree that took others with it (my photo)

As a result of this poor soil, crops may thrive for two or three years, but then fail because they have depleted all the nutrients. Cattle ranches may survive for 5 to 8 years, but these too eventually fail. The farmers and ranchers clear more land, and the cycle continues. It’s vicious, and it’s destroying forest at an alarming rate.  However, there are ways to practice agriculture sustainably in the rainforest.  It involves the cultivation of tall, sheltering trees such as the Brazil nut, rubber and mango. Below this, trees that can tolerate the shade, such as cacao (where we get chocolate) and coffee are planted amongst small gardens containing non-native plants such as beans, corn, and rice. Many villages also grow small plots of a plant called manioc, which is a staple in the traditional Brazilian diet as a source of carbohydrates.  This type of agriculture allows subsistence farmers to settle permanently, and provides them with greater income. In fact, a survey showed that only 21% of farmers surveyed in Ouro Preto do Oeste, Rondonia had heard of sustainable agriculture before, but 83% of those who knew what it was had adopted the practice. Additionally, a 1990 study showed that the farmers who switched to sustainable methods made an average of twice the income of the slash and burn farmers. With this being said, what I’ve concluded is that most people don’t know the impact they have on the environment when they slash and burn. The Brazilians love their land. After speaking with our tour guide at length, I have learned what a deep respect the people of the forest have for it. Many would not participate in slash and burn if they knew the impact they had, and that they could be making more money with sustainable methods.

A sustainable community farm plot featuring manic

Fixing this conundrum is easier said than done. This was my first trip abroad, so I was astonished at the level of poverty I saw. I cannot imagine living as many Brazilians do, with dirt floors and ceilings that leak, no A.C. in a perpetual summer, and no window glass to keep out the insects and vampire bats. Cell service is spotty in the thick jungle, and internet is even harder to get. Many isolated homes don’t even have electricity. How would these people know what they’re doing to the environment? They don’t have access to Google, let alone scientific studies on the harm of deforestation. So they continue to unknowingly harm the environment with unsustainable methods that the forest will never recover from. Choosing between a full belly and leaving trees standing is a choice many face all the time, and they tend to choose a full belly.

Enter Cowspiracy. Great premise (on the deforestation issues), bad conclusion. You can tell the writers haven’t grasped the whole problem, at least not as it applies to the Amazon. Unfortunately, this is an issue that Brazil must fix on its own, with proper incentive programs and education. According to our tour guides, Brazilians are already raising and consuming more poultry than in the past, because they do not want to harm the environment. Nearly every house I encountered had at least two chickens; one to eat for dinner and one to have chicks. The chickens run free range around the village, so not everyone needs a rooster. This is also helpful because it reduces feed costs.

Different examples of Brazilian poultry production: free range and confinement.
The small hole in the center of the cage is both a pond for the ducks and a
water source that is fenced in by boards that go down into the river. Below is
an example of a free range chicken.
 Chickens are omnivores, and the rainforest is literally carpeted in insects. There are also lots of small snakes, frogs, and lizards to keep these mini Tyranosaurs happy. Cowspiracy’s conclusion (that going vegan solves all of the world’s problems) is false because forcing these people to give up chicken and fish in favor of foods like beans for protein would cause malnutrition, and ultimately more deforestation as subsistence farmers struggle to grow enough beans to meet their protein requirements. It is also a false conclusion because Americans don’t really import beef from Brazil.

Brazilian cattle are nearly all Bos indicus (I think I only saw one cow with a trace of Bos taurus influence while I was there, and then only a trace) because of the hot climate, wet weather, and choking insects. The cattle I saw were also skinny from what I’m assuming was a combination of nutrient-poor grass and internal parasites. Brazilian cattle are also nearly all grass finished. Americans prefer tender, fatty grain-finished beef, and America also holds an unquestionable monopoly on this type of cattle. Unless you ate only imported grass finished beef (a pricey rarity in the U.S.) going vegan will not do anything to help the Amazon’s deforestation problem.

So what can you, the member of a developed nation like the good old U.S. of A do to help the rainforest? Not much, except buy lots and lots of Brazil nuts. The Brazil nut tree is massive, and its flowers can only be pollinated by one species of bee that needs a surrounding forest for sustenance during the time when the trees are not in bloom. For this reason, it’s nearly impossible to cultivate Brazil nuts in plantations. Brazil nut farmers must maintain the natural rain forest around their trees in order for the bees to survive in the off months. Therefore, the Brazil nut trade helps promote the conservation of rainforests, and they are the best tasting nuts in existence, in my opinion. Even though they cannot be sold in the U.S.A because of possible foreign contaminants, raw Brazil nuts are absolutely amazing in taste. In fact, I accidentally ate too many of them while I was there and ended up with a very mild case of selenium toxicity because of how rich in selenium the raw nuts are, and the sheer number I ate. I couldn’t help it. They’re just so good. The roasted nuts can often be bought in bulk from health food stores, and after what I learned from this trip, I plan to buy them as often as I can.

A Brazil nut's flower, and the nut itself

Unfortunately, our developed hands are tied when it comes to animal agriculture. We don’t eat much Brazilian beef (In fact, only 1% of America's beef consumption is from Brazilian cattle), so changing our diet doesn’t help, unless it’s to include more Brazil nuts. The only thing we can do is use diplomacy to encourage the government of Brazil (where most of the Amazon Rainforest is located) to enact incentive programs to encourage sustainable farming practices, or by enacting sanctions and tariffs to force them to promote sustainability. The latter option would hurt America’s already strained relationship with Brazil, so diplomacy is the best option, in conjunction with worldwide pressure. A harsher approach would also raise the price of goods like coffee and chocolate, since Brazil exports a lot of these commodities. We all know Americans love their Starbucks, so coffee shortages would be extremely inconvenient.


 The graphics above help illustrate my point more clearly. I took these numbers from the USDA website, and you can look them up yourself if you want to check my math. Since such a small, minuscule portion of US beef comes from rainforest countries, these graphs prove just how useless of a solution going vegan is. So why does Cowspiracy make this error?

Simple. The creators were trying to compare apples to oranges, because they didn't understand the complexities of economics as relates to meat imports and exports, and they don't understand how American beef is produced. American beef (with the exception of a teeny, tiny, pretty much insignificant number of cattle grown in Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico) is not raised anywhere near the rainforest. Our system involves making use of prairies, pastures, and scrub that were once grazed by millions of buffalo until unregulated hunting wiped them out in the 19th century. Unlike the rainforest biome, huge, grazing ruminants are an important part of the ecosystem. Eventually, most of the cattle destined for beef go to feedlots for a couple of months, but the majority of their life is spent on this rangeland, filling the niche the buffalo used to fill. It's very important too, because grazing fixes carbon in the soil, and manure helps fertilize the range, promoting soil quality. This is the complete opposite of what happens in Brazil's rainforest, because this ecosystem was not designed to sustain large, grazing ruminants. This means it's very important that if you must consume grass-finished beef, make sure it's American grass-finished beef.

This is what I learned from my time in Brazil, as pertains to agriculture. I am so fortunate to have had this experience, because it opened my eyes to just how beautiful, wild, and important the rainforest is to the planet. There is nothing quite like waking up early, before even the dawn, and listening to the sounds of howler monkeys nearly a mile away. There is nothing like feeling the pull of a huge peacock bass on the end of your fishing line, or feeling the smooth, human-like skin of a dolphin as it swims beneath you. The feeling of warm, tropical rain on your skin is intoxicating, and the sight of sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the largest tree you've ever seen is surreal. These are things that must be protected. On this, Cowspiracy and I agree. Unfortunately, unless we quit pretending going vegetarian or vegan will help the rainforest and begin focusing on diplomatic solutions, they may not be around for much longer. The rainforest needs protecting, and it's up to us to do it.


I'm a full-time college student at Texas A&M University, where I'm in the process of getting my Animal Science degree, with eventual aspirations to go to law school and work as a consulting lawyer for agriculture corporations. I grew up around animals, and currently manage an operation that breeds show-quality boer goats for 4H and FFA exhibitors. My family also raises commercial cattle in south Texas, where I also worked in cotton farming.
    

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