The Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, is located in the heart of the country and is home to 5% of the world's biodiversity. It is now experiencing deforestation twice as fast as that of the Amazon. Located to the east of the Amazon rainforest, on the high plateaus on the border between the states of Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia, the Cerrado is nothing but soy and corn fields as far as the eye can see . Sacrificed in silence, this fragile forest now threatens to disappear.
Brazilian agricultural production reached a record level this year, particularly in the west of the state of Bahia, the "Matopiba", a region where agro-trading has reigned supreme since the 1980s. In this region, the development of intensive agriculture has taken over 50% of the vegetation cover of the immense territory of the Cerrado, which extends over an area of two million square kilometers, or four times the size of France.
Unlike the Amazon, where 80% of the land must be protected, in the Cerrado, the law only requires the protection of 20% of the occupied territory. An Eldorado for agribusiness, whose production is mainly exported to France.
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