The location and conditions that allow nature to thrive are also very important for agriculture in Brazil. In fact, the Cerrado is one of the most important food-producing regions on the planet. Already it holds nearly all of Brazil’s cotton, nearly half of both its sugarcane and soybean, and over a third of its planted forests and cattle pastures.
This farmland is still spreading and many see MATOPIBA, the northern part of the Cerrado made up of Maranhão (MA), Tocantins (TO), southern Piauí (PI), and western Bahia (BA), as the next frontier. The production of soybeans alone has tripled there over the past two decades.
This kind of rapid change can bring economic growth, but it can also impact communities that have relied upon local nature for generations. Ensuring that the area can sustain food production, and that nature can still provide benefits to people, is a crucial challenge.