Evaristo de Miranda, Bolsonaro’s environmental guru, retires from Embrapa

Agricultural engineer Evaristo de Miranda, one of the main ideologues of Brazilian agribusiness, retired from Embrapa at the end of 2022, aged 70. For more than 40 years, he headed several departments at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, where he carried out research —often controversial and contested— that shaped the sector’s thinking.

With passages through several Embrapa units, Miranda was, until the end of 2021, head of Embrapa Territorial, a post he has held since 2015. He spent the last year as a direct advisor to the presidency of Embrapa and should now turn to the private sector.

Some of the ideas that have become a mantra in agribusiness discourse originate in Miranda: that Brazil is the country that best preserves its native vegetation; that our environmental laws are the strictest and that the farmer is penalized for them. But even so, says the speech, it is in the productive areas that the largest slice of our forests is found.

Also born from the data generated by him was the idea that the country has a lot of indigenous land and conservation units, which would lead to a shortage of area for agricultural growth.

Miranda accumulated, throughout his career, influence with rulers from the most varied political spectrums —at least since José Sarney—, but it was in the Bolsonaro government (2019-2022) that he achieved more prominence, dictating the guidelines of the environmental area since the beginning of his career. phase of the transitional government.

He was even quoted to take over the Ministry of the Environment, but ended up not accepting it, which made room for Ricardo Salles. Data from him, however, guided the government, which did not create any conservation unit or indigenous land. And they were repeated to exhaustion in the last four years by the Presidency of the Republic, by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and also by the Parliamentary Front for Agriculture.

In his first speech at the UN General Assembly in 2019, Bolsonaro said, echoing Miranda: “Our Amazon is bigger than all of Western Europe and remains virtually untouched. Proof that we are one of the countries that most protect the environment.”

On the other hand, the agronomist accumulated disagreements with the academy, mainly with researchers linked to studies of dynamics of land use, geoprocessing and satellite monitoring. Even within Embrapa itself, he was criticized and questioned.

The most well-known controversy was around the change, in 2012, to the Forestry Code — a law that establishes the protection of native vegetation on private properties.

Discussions in the government and Congress to change the law, dating from 1965, had been going on since 2008 and gained strength when Lula, then in his second term, commissioned a study from Embrapa on the allocation of land in Brazil —how much was protected in devices such as conservation and indigenous lands, how much was occupied by agriculture and how much was preserved in rural properties.

It fell to Miranda to conduct the analysis. He presented a series of maps and numbers arguing that if all forms of protection were added together, and if the Forestry Code were strictly followed, food production would be unfeasible, mainly in the Amazon and in the Pantanal. It was the keyword to give strength to the argument of the ruralists.

At the time, geoprocessing data were not so accurate and it was necessary to work with some extrapolations and estimates. But Miranda’s calculations didn’t match those of a number of other scientists.

No one understood how he had arrived at those numbers, since he did not open up his methodology or publish his findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as is customary.

Over time, the researchers discovered that Miranda had overestimated the areas that should be protected along rivers, the so-called riparian forests. The previous version of the Forest Code established protection ranges according to the width of the river. The wider it is, the greater the protection should be.

Miranda, when calculating, always considered the highest value for all rivers, which reduced the area available for agriculture. According to him, only 29% of the country would be available for production. Other studies have calculated that share to be much higher, at around 45%. Today, agriculture alone already occupies about 36% of the territory.

In academia and in environmentalism, it was conventional to treat his data as “creative accounting”. But despite the criticism, the message stuck. The code was weakened, and Congress managed to pass amnesty on illegal deforestation until 2008.

Miranda has become a sought-after speaker at agribusiness events. In 2018, a few months before the election, a video of his performance went viral.

“Brazil, which was big, has become small, because there is a lot of land allocated in Brazil”, he said at the 6th South American Agriculture Forum, in Curitiba. “It’s legitimate to give land to an Indian. The problem is that it doesn’t fit.”

At another point, he said that nobody protects the environment more than rural landowners. “The total of this is 218 million hectares. That is half the area of ​​real estate. The Brazilian farmer is the only one in the world that protects half. 25% of the national territory is protected by rural producers.”

And released another creative number. He stated that more than R$ 3 trillion in assets would be immobilized for environmental protection. “There is no professional category that preserves the environment more, dedicates more resources to it, than the Brazilian rural producer.”

Last year, a group of 12 renowned Brazilian researchers specializing in the Amazon, cerrado, climate change, remote sensing and land use analysis published an article in the scientific journal Biological Conservation accusing Miranda and the team at Embrapa of promoting what they called “false controversies “.

According to the group, led by Raoni Rajão, from UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), false controversies build the idea that there is no scientific consensus on certain subjects, generating doubts in politicians regarding topics where there is actually, yes, consensus—for example, climate change and the impact of deforestation.

According to authors, like climatologist Carlos Nobre, formerly of Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), and biologist Mercedes Bustamante, from UnB (University of Brasília), Miranda “manufactures uncertainties”.

The work was well received by scientists, but criticized by agro entities. Embrapa published a disclaimer defending the reputation of agribusiness, Miranda and the company itself. He said that the works of Embrapa Territorial demonstrate, “the role and unavoidable protagonism of the farmer in the preservation of the environment and brought subsidies and encouragement to the rural producers”.

Last Thursday (5), Embrapa released a note announcing Miranda’s retirement and once again the president of the institution, Celso Moretti, praised him.

“Perhaps because of his training as an ecologist, Evaristo was one of the first to bring us the vision of the importance of the balance between agricultural production and environmental preservation, which today we have very clear. In other words, the vision that today prevails in Brazilian agriculture that it is possible to produce and preserve the environment.”

Miranda was not found by the report, but in the note from Embrapa he said that he will now “continue, in the private sector, in the area of ​​research and communication with the urban world, always close to rural producers and the realities of the countryside”.

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