Vera (Brasil) (AFP)

"Once the pandemic has passed, I'm going on vacation to Europe!", Says Rodrigo Pozzobon, agricultural engineer in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso (center-west) where agribusiness displays insolent health, stimulated by strong Chinese demand .

A long track of red earth leads to "Jaçana", the 2,350 hectare farm of Rodrigo Pozzobon, in the municipality of Vera, about sixty km from Sorriso, considered the Brazilian capital of agribusiness. The area has 1.5 million hectares of crops, the equivalent of half of Belgium.

The soybean and corn fields, mostly transgenic, are now dry. The harvests took place a few weeks ago and were sold to the major marketing companies established in the region, such as Cargill, Dreyfus, Bunge and Cofco. Their first buyer is China, which accounted for 72.6% of sales in the first seven months of the year.

In addition to demand from China, which provides food for its pigs and poultry, the trade war between Beijing and Washington and the fall of the real by 25% this year against the dollar have favored Brazilian agribusiness, which represents more than a fifth of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Exports of soybeans, the main Brazilian export product, thus increased by 36.3% in volume and 33.3% in value between January and July compared to the same period in 2019. Nearly 70 million tonnes have exported for 23.8 billion dollars.

A surge that could even drop soybean stocks in Brazil, the world's largest exporter, to an all-time low, despite record harvests this year.

- Recession of the Amazon rainforest -

But the Brazilian agribusiness, which has seen a strong increase in its exports of beef (+ 32.3%) and pork (+ 51.7%), is not immune to suspicion of its responsibility in the deforestation of the region. 'Amazonia, where the area deforested since the beginning of 2020 has already exceeded the record levels of last year.

An overview of Sorriso, Vera or Sinop, another region of the Mato Grosso agribusiness, is enough to see the decline of the tropical forest. Since the arrival to power in 2019 of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a supporter of opening up the Amazon to mining, agricultural and livestock activities, the tensions around the management of the Amazon have never were also strong.

Rodrigo Pozzobon's family, of Italian origin, took part in the migratory movement of the 1970s between southern Brazil and this vast agricultural region located between the central Cerrado plateau and the Amazon.

For the farmer, it is possible to increase agricultural production without destroying the forest, for example by transforming into crops the millions of hectares already deforested and which are used as pasture for livestock.

He recalls that in recent years, farmers have been forced to leave 80% of their vast land in its natural state and to exploit only 20%.

"In the past, we have done wrong because we have deforested, and some farms have deforested more than what was allowed. But this has been corrected and we have been forced to pay environmental compensation," he said. reference to fines which are then used to finance forest protection.

Prohibited by law, arson fires carried out by farmers on deforested areas to cultivate or graze livestock, however, continue in the Amazon region during the dry season which begins in July.

Not far from Sinop, AFP has spotted several burnt fields. Unchecked, the fires entered the forest where they ended up extinguishing naturally, causing damage.

© 2020 AFP