Expansion of soy in Matopiba: Cerrado’s last agriculture frontier

Technical University of Madrid | January, 2024

With a changed political context after the 2022 elections of Brazil, achieved with the electoral winning of the centre-left and more sustainability-prone government coalition, there is renewed momentum to discuss policy options that could influence food system pathways towards more inclusive and sustainable outcomes. 

The Matopiba region of Brazil is an area composed of parts of four States in the Northeast of the country. The region contains the largest areas of preserved Cerrado biome and it has witnessed significant agricultural expansion since the latter part of the 1980s, particularly soy. An expansion in the “last agriculture frontier” which has placed the region in the spotlight of debates around trajectories of global agri-food systems. Soy from Matopiba is mostly produced to feed world’s growing appetite for meat in developing countries such as Brazil and China – and developed countries such as those in Europe. Despite the economic dynamism that it generates to a historically poor region of Brazil, this food system pathway has been highly contested due to its profound impacts on local water resources, biodiversity and carbon stocks, by fostering land conflicts, and for being associated with land and green grabbing severely affecting the livelihoods of family farming communities. Many have pointed out that the soy production model in the region generates large quantities of wealth to a few privileged non-residents, a relative economic dynamic concentrated in a few regional hubs, and very few jobs for the bottom strata of the society. 

Imbalances of the soybean-meat complex

For a large number of actors in the region, the soybean-meat expansion is clearly a winner in terms of a preferred development model. Even for family farmers who had their traditional territorial management systems broken by the expansion of industrial agriculture, the narrative of progress brought by soy is deeply entrenched in their development imaginaries. There are clear calls that progress is not reaching the margins of these communities, but instead of questioning the model, some suggest the solution would go through better “distributing the benefits of soy” to a larger share of the society. 

Expansion of soybean-meat complex has also been associated with several reported cases of land grabbing. A classic procedure in land grabbing is corrupting local decision-making and authorities (such as notaries, judges, etc.), which can facilitate the eviction of traditional communities of their traditional lands. 

More recently, and associated with legislative reforms of land protection, one observes increased cases of green grabbing. Brazilian legislation requires that 20-35% of preserved Cerrado land must be maintained inside properties. Mostly to comply with this Legal Reserve requirements, farmers that grow crops in the plateau areas declare beyond their production areas, normally valleys, as their own land. Green grabbing occurs when these assertions register valleys traditionally occupied by rural communities – generally in non-titled traditional occupation – as Legal Reserves of soy farms Imprecision in land titling and land governance overall only plays in favours of those who have access to power and political decisions. 

Another issue is the value and effectiveness of traceability of soy for ensuring more sustainable and inclusive production systems in the region. Soy is generally aggregated from different suppliers before being embarked for exports. That means it might be extremely difficult to separate soy from risk areas from potential “contamination”. Methodologies to differentiate and ensure deforestation-free products are still being tested, which brings one additional layer of complexity for ensuring the sustainability of soy production in the region. 

What measures should be taken?

Given the relevance of the problematic described above for the future of the Cerrado ecoregion in Brasil, MATS proposes in the CS14 to explore seven potential measures to use trade regimes to influence the pathways of the soybeans-meat complex in the Matopiba region to be more sustainable.

These measures have been explored collectively with key stakeholders at national and regional level, gaining valuable insights on their time convenience, potential impacts and effectiveness, and political feasibility. 

The Technical University of Madrid is a partner of the MATS project and leads case study 5. The UPM research team brings a food systems and system thinking approach to the MATS project, to guide the implementation of the 15 case studies. Their research experience combines systems thinking ideas and practices, with participatory methods and tools to inform food systems transformation.