At COP30, Brazil's farmers defend record on forests

BELEM - With world leaders gathered in Brazil for the COP30 climate summit, the nation's farmers are taking the opportunity to make their case that they are not to blame for the much criticised deforestation that threatens the Amazon rainforest.

Hosting news conferences before a global audience, the contingent of soybean, grain and cattle farmers rails at trade barriers set up by the European Union to protect the Amazon and other vulnerable lands.

The EU and the United States are taking steps to limit Brazilian farm exports, citing concerns over deforestation.

Anti-deforestation regulation is set to take effect in December that will stop companies around the world from selling into the EU market such commodities as coffee, beef and soybeans that are linked to deforestation.

In Brazil, environmental groups including Greenpeace have documented links between beef, soybeans, cotton, coffee, biofuels and other agriculture products to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and biodiverse ecosystems such as the Atlantic rainforest and Cerrado tropical savannah.

The agribusiness sector says, however, deforestation is the fault of those involved in illegal logging, gold mining and land grabbing, and that the trade barriers harm farmers and ranchers using sustainable practices.

"We have to show the world that it's not the farmer who deforests ... it's criminals," said Roberto Rodrigues, Brazil's special envoy for agriculture at COP30.

"We have a problem with our European, North American competitors - we are better and they know it," Rodrigues, a former minister of agriculture, said last week at a COP30 panel.

"They mix up what's illegal in Brazil with us, they point to illegal deforestation, (land) invasions and blame it on agriculture," he said.

Driving deforestation

Brazil's agribusiness sector is politically powerful, as agriculture accounts for about 8.4% of its GDP and 40% of its exports, according to a 2025 report by the World Bank.    

Soybeans accounted for 13% of Brazil's exports, second only to oil, in 2024, government data shows.

But a major driver of deforestation is the cutting down of trees to clear land for cattle pastures and vast soybean fields.  

Although recent government data shows Brazil's deforestation rates are dropping, the country was nonetheless responsible for 42% of a record global tropical forest loss in 2024, according to data from the World Resources Institute, a global research group.

Government data released last week showed deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest fell 11% in the 12 months through July, compared with the same period a year earlier, hitting an 11-year low.

Greenhouse gases from deforestation combined with Brazil's 240 million strong cattle herd position it as the world's sixth largest carbon emitter, according to the European Union's Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

Brazilian JBS SA, the world's biggest beef producer, along with 47 private sector initiatives, were honoured with a sustainable business award at COP30 for a programme to help ranchers comply with environmental regulations.

"There's a narrative against Brazil's agribusiness," said Gilberto Tomazoni, CEO of JBS.

"We have to show transparency ... so consumers can make their own decisions," he said.

Brazil's team at COP30 has been urged by the country's National Confederation of Agriculture to fight against the "stigmatization of local farmers" and push for access to global climate funds and carbon credits to help pay for forest restoration projects.

The Confederation said it wanted to make sure discussions on a just transition to sustainability "do not legitimize unilateral trade measures with climate justifications," saying such measures have a "disproportionate impact" on developing countries.

Outside a dedicated area at COP30 called the AgriZone, environmental groups have staged protests against agribusiness export companies.

"For agribusiness, this is a big window of opportunity to get resources," said Bárbara Loureiro, an environmental issues coordinator with Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement, which advocates for land reform.

"This sustainable agribusiness being presented at COP does not deter ... large estate agribusiness, which burns and deforests," she said.   

Trade barriers

The EU's regulation agreed upon in 2022 to block deforestation-linked commodities from the European market is set take effect next month for big farmers after a year's delay.

Some EU member states are pushing to postpone the measure for another year, arguing it is costly and logistically untenable.

In addition, Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Relations has said the rules pose a "significant and disproportionate burden on countries such as Brazil, whose tropical agriculture is conducted responsibly and sustainably."

Concerns over deforestation have also been used as an argument to delay a trade deal between the European Union and Mercosur, a South American political and commerce block.

The deal, which the European Commission is seeking to be signed this year, would lower tariffs between the EU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, creating one of the largest free trade zones in the world.

In Brazil, the government's yet-to-be-launched Climate Plan that establishes a national strategy to reduce emissions is opposed by a agribusiness-aligned caucus in Congress as posing a potential obstacle to trade.

The caucus, a political force controlling majorities in both the Congress and the Senate, has criticised what it regards as an excessively large share of emissions ascribed to the sector by linking agribusiness to illegal deforestation.

But environmentalists say Brazil's farmers are an influential lobby driving deforestation, as agribusiness-aligned caucuses at local and national levels have passed amnesty laws to legalise illegally invaded and deforested land.

Most recently, they have passed rules that could make it easier for farmers to receive formal authorisation to deforest land.

In defence, Rodrigues told Context: "If it (the agribusiness sector) has benefited, that's something from the past ... we have to look forward."

The agribusiness sector is also pushing for infrastructure projects to ship beef and grains through the Amazon rainforest, a key target of protests at COP30 led by forest and Indigenous communities living near the path of proposed roads, railways and waterways.

"It's unacceptable that Brazil continues to pretend that everything is fine here so it can continue to ship products to Europe," said Indigenous chief Gilson Tupinambá, part of a coalition protesting infrastructure projects at COP30.

(Reporting by Andre Cabette Fabio; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ellen Wulfhorst.)