Cattle a tough target in Amazon protection fight
APYTEREWA INDIGENOUS RESERVE, Brazil (Reuters) - The small plane is gliding over a mesmerizing landscape of green pasture interspersed by patches of forest, but Wayne Lindbergh keeps his eyes firmly glued to his laptop.
Below, where a map on his screen indicates forest stood last year, bare soil is charred brown by recent burning, another example of the widespread illegal deforestation of the Amazon forest that environmentalists blame on cattle ranchers.
"This is all new this year," says Lindbergh, a campaigner for the Greenpeace environmental group, earphones clamped to his head as he points to the screen of his laptop computer showing the latest satellite data on deforestation.
Soon thousands of cows will be chewing pasture on the freshly cleared land in Brazil's Amazon state of Para, just a tiny part of Brazil's 200-million-strong commercial cattle herd, the world's biggest, that makes it a beef superpower.
More than 70 million are in the Amazon area, three for every person. This is where the industry has grown fastest in recent years, a trend activists say is due to cheap land, widespread illegal clearing and weak government enforcement.
Now, buoyed by a landmark success in persuading the country's soy industry to avoid deforestation, activists are hoping to use consumer power to rein in the cattle industry.
Ahead of world climate talks in December, they point to evidence that ranching is by far the biggest driver of the deforestation that makes Brazil the world's fourth-biggest carbon emitter. Greenpeace, which says Amazon cattle are the biggest single driver of deforestation in the world, launched a campaign on Monday linking illegal land-clearing with beef products sold by companies in Europe and the United States. [nN14290980])
The campaign against soy farmers in 2006, which linked deforestation with major firms such as McDonald's Corp, led to a three-year moratorium on soy from deforested areas.
TOUGHER TASK
But replicating that success with the cattle industry will be tougher, activists say. The industry, long at the heart of a bitter struggle for land in the Amazon, is a powerful opponent seen as strategically important by the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Major Brazilian meat-processing companies JBS, Marfrig and Bertin have expanded abroad to become global players and in the past five years have driven the industrialization of cattle ranching in the Amazon.
State development bank BNDES gave financing totaling 4.7 billion reais ($2.38 billion) to the four biggest meatpackers in 2008 and recently created a 1 billion reais ($1.97 billion) package to help them through the world financial crisis.
Environmental groups say that means the government is effectively financing the forest's illegal destruction, even as it has adopted its first target for reducing deforestation -- by half over the next decade.
They say the slaughterhouse operators, taking advantage of widespread confusion over land ownership and a limited state presence, rarely check whether meat comes from legal areas.
"It's the role of the industry to segregate," said Andre Muggiati, another Greenpeace campaigner. "The industry can demand from farms that they don't deforest any more." Continued...
