Soybeans are advancing and now occupy 10% of the Cerrado, according to a MapBiomas survey

Soybean plantations occupy 20 million hectares of the cerrado, equivalent to 10% of the entire area of ​​the biome. The survey released this Sunday (11) by MapBiomas, a platform that monitors land use in Brazil, also shows that the space destined for this type of cultivation grew by 1,443% between 1985 and 2021.

This Sunday, Cerrado Day is celebrated. MapBiomas points out that, in 2021, only half (53.1%) of what is the second largest Brazilian biome was still covered by native vegetation — in the last 37 years, 27.9 million hectares were lost.

According to Dhemerson Conciani, a researcher at Ipam (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) and who is part of the Cerrado team at MapBiomas, the region is undergoing two simultaneous processes of transformation. “On the one hand, areas already anthropized [cujas características originais foram alteradas pelo homem], from pastures, are converted into crops. On the other hand, however, we see crops entering directly over native vegetation,” he says.

For Conciani, this indicates that the increase in production in the biome is not due to better practices and soil management, but to the opening of new areas for cultivation. The substitution of pastures for the cultivation of grains occurs more intensively in the south and southeast of the cerrado, in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso do Sul.

Researcher at Ipam and scientific coordinator of MapBiomas, Julia Shimbo says that it is not known what “the point of no return for the cerrado” is, but there is already evidence of the impact of the loss of native vegetation on the regional climate.

The researchers point to an article that concluded that the conversion of native areas of the Cerrado to pastures and agriculture has already made the climate in the region almost 1°C warmer and 10% drier. “Global climate changes can still worsen this scenario of increased temperature and reduced rainfall, causing damage to agriculture, the water supply of cities and the country’s energy production.”, says Julia.

According to those responsible for the survey published this Sunday, 12% of the Cerrado’s territory is in some conservation area or on indigenous land, with 67% belonging to private properties.

This Monday (12), a new system for monitoring deforestation alerts in the cerrado will come into operation by Ipam (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), in partnership with MapBiomas and Lapig (Laboratory for Image Processing and Geoprocessing) of UFG.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}