They were the best specimens of the Cebu race, white and humpback oxen, with sad eyes and a long jacket hanging around the neck.Each image of the animals that was transmitted by the big screen caused an explosion of screams of the auctions while the public bid between long sips of beer.Average price per ox: 15,000 reais –3,000 euros-.The auction, in the restaurant of the mangrove of Las Garzas, in the city of Belém, in the mouth of the Amazon, was attended by a hundred local ranchers, of those who go in a truck with a sticker of Jair Bolsonaro and listen to a university sertanejo,The Brazilian version of Country Rock.

There were also the buyers and managers of Mataderos of the Mastodontic meat industry in Brazil, the second country producing beef in the world, and that - thanks to its vertiginous expansion in the Amazon - will soon be the first.

For those farmers, the Amazon jungle - which extends to the width of five million square kilometers and houses one in five existing fauna species - is an ideal place for cattle.“The grass is much better here than in the south;There is a lot of sun and 2,000 millimeters of rain per year fall in front of 1,000 in Minas Gerais, ”explains Leonardo, auction advisor, who visited the area from Belo Horizonte, 2,600 kilometers further south."It is the highest quality and cheaper meat in the world."

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Almost as large as Portugal, the municipality of São Félix would deserve three entries in a Guinness book dedicated to the climatic crisis.

First, with 24 million head of cattle - more than inhabitant - it has the largest beef of Brazil.

Second, he leads the deforestation ranking, after destroying almost 4,000 km2de jungle in 2020, a third of all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.This is equivalent to more than 1,000 football fields per day.

Third, the municipality produces more net emissions of CO2por inhabitant - 22 times more than the national average - than any other in Brazil.Neither the megalopolis of São Paulo, with its 21 million inhabitants, emits, in net terms, both co2 as the jungle in the disappearance of São Félix de Xingu.

80% of deforestation in the Amazon is done to pave the way to cattle

Of course, the relationship between these three records is not accidental.80% of deforestation in the Amazon is done to pave the way to cattle.And 25 out of 30 tons of net emissions of Co2Aquí are the result of deforestation, which must be added the methane that these 24 million flatulent cebu oxs give off.

Considered the lung of the planet, the deforesting Amazonia already emits more greenhouse gases than it absorbs.On the road from Xinguara to São Félix there are hardly any trees, and huge green meadows extend on both sides to the horizon.

"This is not the Amazon," said a ranchera in Ourilandia do Norte."The Amazon begins more west."But the deforestation border always advances.

São Félix is also a focus of violence, organized crime, conflicts over the possession of the land and clashes between timber, gold miners and indigenous communities such as the Kaiapó or the Xikren who live along the bank of the Xingú.

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On the sign at the entrance to the town, next to the Alegre Bem-Vindo to São Félix do Xingu, the letters C.V.It means Vermelho command, one of the drug traffickers born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro that now also manage the extraction of wood and gold from the Amazon.

The illegal felling of the Brazilian Amazon, exposed

The majority of meat production in Brazil is consumed internally but exports grow every year, especially to Asia.The main producers and exporters are JBS, the world's largest meat company, Marfrig and Minerva.All have been denounced for sacrificing animals grazing in deforested areas of São Félix do Xingu.

According to an October 2021 report by the Federal Prosecutor's Office, 31% of frigol meat and 19% of JBS registered irregularities within the agreement they had signed to eliminate the use of animals from deforesting areas.Marfrig and Minerva have also been denounced.In many cases, the meat companies "whiten" the origin of the animals that sacrifice when taking them the last week of fattening to areas of grass to the south, where there is no longer deforestation.

Landslis -for guning guns protect illegally occupied land for beef

Despite signing zero deforestation agreements, banks continue to financing Brazilian meat companies without putting conditions.Barclays and Santander have managed the broadcast of JBS bonds for millions of euros in recent months.

To break the vicious circle between deforestation, livestock and CO2HACE emissions it is necessary to radically review the livestock model in the Amazon.If in Europe the battle for the environment is fought against hyperincial livestock and industrial macrogranjas, in the Amazon the challenge is another.There are too many animals per square meter here.The Amazon surface occupied by livestock has risen 80% in the last 20 years, up to 1.4 million square kilometers, and the long march of the cebu does not stop.

"We have to raise the number of cows per square kilometer and recover the hundreds of thousands of hectares of deforested degraded areas that no longer serve as a grass," says Paulo Barreto, the director of Imazon, an IMAZON director, an environmental research group basedIn Belém."It is enough to intensify livestock in a moderate way by maintaining the grass as a power supply and avoiding highly intensified fattening units."In this way Barreto considers viable to raise the production of bovine meat according to the government's objectives without more destruction.

It would not be difficult to carry this plan.The cost would be less than public credits granted to farmers currently.But there's a problem."The cheapest way to appropriate land illegally in the Amazon is to get cattle," says economist Luiz Alberto Melchert, agricultural consultant.If economic incentives are not eliminated to illegal deforestation to create space for livestock, it will be almost impossible to advance with alternative projects.

The root of the problem is the ambiguous legal definition of millions of hectares of public land in the Brazilian Amazon.At the moment, 50% of the jungle is protected through conservation areas such as national parks or indigenous lands.

Although there is deforestation in this area, it would be relatively easy to stop it if the government had the will to do so.21% consist of private farms in which only 20% can be legally deforested.There also, with property titles in order, it is easy to control deforestation since it is known who the owners are.

The problem occurs with 29% of non -destined public land, owned by the federal state or the regional state but without an assigned use.This is where most of the illegal appropriation of land and deforestation occurs.

The process is the following.First the so -called Grileiros - specialized in stealing land and falsifying titles - occupy the areas.Talan with chainsaw the most value trees - especially mahogany - for export, through false documents, mainly to Europe.Then, the rest is deforest using a five -kilometer long chain that crawls between two megatractors.What is left is burned, it is sprayed with herbicide and the roots are started.Finally, fences are built, grass are sown and the oxen are incorporated into the area.

The situation is sperm.“Deforesting is proof that the earth is busy and is useful to try to get a title later;They make a map for the government, ask for possession of the land and wait, ”says Brenda Brito, legal expert.Those responsible for destruction are powerful and rich landowners.“Deforesting costs 2,000 reais per hectare, so that they are not small farmers or farmers responsible;It is a very lucrative business. ”

Deforestar is useful for claiming property, it is a lucrative business and now another amnesty can arrive

Sooner or later the legalization or an amnesty will come.“When the forest code was adopted in 2012, it came with an amnesty and there have been several since then.The government will always open another way of legalization; ”says Mauro Lucio, farmer from São Félix do Xingu.While waiting for the next law, impunity is total."If the Ibama [the Federal Environmental Protection entity] accuses them of having deforested an appropriate forest area, they answer:" But if the earth is not mine! "Says Lucio.

The next amnesty can come soon with the new Heritage Regularization Law that Bolsonaro has presented in Congress."It will legalize illegal appropriation and deforestation," says Brito.A true gift from the president in an election year.It is not for anything that in the gas station, on the main street of São Félix, flashes a screen with a huge portrait of Jair Messias Bolsonaro.