GLOBAL DAIRY BRAZIL
How Brazil combined intensive land use with rainforest protection Words by: Wagner Beskow
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“Brazil preserves more than 632 million hectares of native vegetation, equivalent to 43 countries and five territories in Europe .”
he first fact-based call to preserving native forests in Brazil was “A Cultura dos Campos” (The Farming of Grassland Areas), an 1898 technical book by J.F. de Assis Brasil. In this book, he argues that government promotion of settlements and deforestation of hill country areas was a mistake that would show its effect in the future and detailed how productivity of the vastly available rolling country could be increased by 50 fold through better agricultural practices and technology. He then went on to set up an 87ha demonstration dairy farm that was exactly 50 times smaller than the beef cattle stations of the South, where he introduced the first Jersey cows into the country, the first Eucalyptus trees, imported the first haymaking equipment as well as seeds of many pasture species and produced the first maize hybrid, well before anyone else nationwide, to name a few of his novelties. The farm was a success, becoming a
TABLE 1. LAND USE IN BRAZIL COMPARED TO THE USA (% OF TOTAL TERRITORY) Type of land use
Brazil
USA
BR/USA
Total preservation areas
66.3
19.9
3.3
Legally preserved (excluded) areas within farms
20.5
0.0
-
Preservation units (parks, reserves, etc)
13.1
8.9
1.5
Native peoples’ preserved land
13.8
2.3
6.0
Native vegetation on unusable/waste land
18.9
8.7
2.2
Agricultural and horticultural areas
30.2
74.3
0.4
Cropping and horticulture
7.8
17.4
0.4
Commerical forestry
1.2
27.9
0.0
Grazing (cultivated and natural grasslands)
21.2
29.0
0.7
Urban areas, roads and other infrastructures
3.5
5.8
0.6
18
demonstration unit for two agricultural faculties and was visited by many famous figures. The new Constitution of 1934, partly influenced Wagner Beskow. by Assis Brasil’s work and ideas, established that “the preservation of natural resources is an obligation of both the Union and the States”. In the same year, the first national “Forest Code” legislation was formalised by President Getúlio Vargas, a personal friend and admirer of Assis Brasil. Still in 1934, Vargas created the “Waters Code”, the “Hunting and Fishery Code”, and the “Animal Protection Code”. Soil and water conservation principles were introduced through these pieces of legislation, good and bad practices were defined, as well as what resources and species could or could not be exploited. The Forest Code established what was then a flat minimum of 25% of the native vegetation to be preserved on every rural property as well as the preservation of native forests alongside streams, so nearly everyone living today grew up with some notion of limits to land, water, native wood and game exploitation, through education, legal penalties and fines.
ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME
Since then, legislation was updated in 1965, 1988, 1998 (defined “environmental crime”, e.g. killing native animals, destroying native vegetation as well as their trading, and made it non bailable) and another update in 2012. The year of 2008 was set as a tolerance breaking point, so native vegetation that should be preserved has to remain or be restored to its status found in that year, as per the government satellite imagery Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | August 2021
