Cattle farming is destroying the Amazon rainforest
Nearly 80 per cent of deforested areas in Brazil are being used for cattle grazing and, as a result, the cattle industry has ballooned since the 1970s, giving Brazil the largest commercial cattle herd in the world and a significant share of the beef and leather markets.
We've had enormous success with green peace's ongoing campaign to save the forest from the expanding soya industry, adding on top of the three-year halt on soya destroying the Amazon in Brazil. Now, green peace are building on that work and tackle cattle ranching as well.
With in 10 years (1996 - 2006) an area the size of Portugal has been turned into grazing land for the cattle farming industry. The Brazilian government wants to double its share of the beef export market in the next ten years.
As with the soya industry, a host of social ills have followed the wave of expansion. Cattle ranching has the highest rates of slave labour in Brazil - just over 3,000 people held as slaves were freed from ranches last year.
Allowing the cattle farmers to expand into the rainforest also poses a significant threat to efforts to combat climate change. Deforestation is largely responsible for making Brazil the fourth largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the cattle industry also contributes a significant quantity of emissions in the form of bovine methane emissions (or cow trumps if you want to be less tactful).
Greenpeace campaigners in Brazil have been investigating the cattle industry for some time and have already used innovative techniques to analyse satellite imagery. From this analysis, they've produced detailed maps showing how cattle ranchers are cutting deeper and deeper into the Amazon, and this information will be invaluable as our campaign unfolds.
Find out more about the amazon deforestation from this interactive map.
The Brazilian government has set targets for reducing deforestation, but it's very hard to see how they can do this while encouraging the growth of cattle ranching as well.
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