In Brazil, large areas of rainforest are cleared for the cultivation of soy.
Some of the soy ends up as animal feed in European fattening farms.
Brazil is the world's largest producer of soy.
Twenty percent of the soy used for animal feed in Europe comes from illegal logging.
Indigenous people in particular suffer from it.
Mato Grosso / Brazil - Soy plantations as far as the eye can see - in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, the protein-rich bean is grown on around 106,000 km², an area larger than Portugal.
Soy is now Brazil's undisputed export hit.
The European Union imports more than 36 million tons of soy flour from Brazil every year.
Most of it is used here as animal feed - to provide pigs, cows and chickens with sufficient protein.
According to a study published in 2020 in the scientific magazine
Science
, around 20 percent of this soy was illegally cleared in the forest.
To trade with Brazil means to be responsible for clearing and greenhouse gas emissions, write the authors of the study.
How much exactly is difficult to prove, says Christian Russau from the Research and Documentation Center Chile-Latin America.
One thing is certain, however, in order to satisfy Europe's hunger for meat, forests are being cut down in Brazil.
Problem shift: Legal rules in Brazil on illegal soy mining - loss of biodiversity
The soy moratorium has been in place in Brazil since 2006: it is an agreement between the soy industry, politics and civil society not to buy soy from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon region.
That works, but it didn't solve the problem, it just postponed it.
In the meantime, forests for soy are mostly cleared in Brazil's Cerrado steppe landscape instead of in the Amazon region.
There, too, this has resulted in a massive loss of biodiversity.
"In addition, soy is not a socially integrative product," explains Russau.
Growing soy is big profit, but it creates very few jobs.
The Brazilian government usually reacts sensitively to criticism of the violation of environmental standards from outside.
After French President Emanuel Macron tweeted in January "To continue to depend on Brazilian soy means to support the deforestation of the rainforest," Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused him of colonialism.
Continuer à dépendre du soja brésilien, ce serait cautionner la déforestation de l'Amazonie.
Nous sommes cohérents avec nos ambitions écologiques, nous nous battons pour produire du soja en Europe!
pic.twitter.com/CORHnlIp8E
- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 12, 2021
The situation has worsened under Brazil’s President Bolsonaro - indigenous people are particularly hard hit
Deforestation for agricultural use is in Brazil
a problem for a long time - under the current administration of President Jair
Bolsonaro
However, the situation has worsened.
On the one hand, it withdrew financial resources from many institutions, such as the Ministry of the Environment.
On the other hand, the president makes it clear again and again that deforestation and land grabbing are not a problem and that he does not care about the rights of indigenous peoples.
"He's really encouraging illegal loggers," says Christian Russau.
This resulted in a record increase in clearing in 2019/20.
Above all, this affects indigenous people who normally live in these areas.
According to the Brazilian Constitution, indigenous peoples have the right to demarcate their areas, i.e. to be specially marked and protected.
But Bolsonaro had already announced at the beginning of his term of office that he would not award indigenous people "an inch of soil" - and he put it into practice.
This also means that indigenous people now live under precarious conditions on the edge of soy plantations - in the hope of getting their land back at some point in the future.
Brazilian soy: Demand for cheap schnitzel in Europe is one of the key problems
Aside from deforestation, there are other environmental problems with Brazilian soy: much of it is genetically modified and large amounts of pesticides are used in its cultivation.
Many of them are banned in the European Union.
Christian Russau sees a need for action on the one hand with the legal rules.
“We urgently need a supply chain law in Germany,” he says.
“Then we could finally hold companies accountable.” On the other hand, he also believes that meat consumption must be reduced.
“As long as there is demand for soy for animal feeding, the problem will remain,” he says.
(Carolin Schulz-Osterloh)