Between ‘breadbasket of the world’ and ‘guardian of the Amazon’, Brazil remains unable to solve its environmental dilemma
Brazil faces a complex environmental dilemma as it attempts to balance its roles as a global food power and a guardian of the Amazon.
Despite efforts to reduce deforestation, contradictions persist, with agribusiness expansion threatening biodiversity and food security.
As COP 30 approaches, Brazil's challenge is to reconcile economic growth with genuine environmental preservation.
On the eve of the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), Brazil seeks to assert itself as an environmental and food power, but it carries contradictions that weaken this narrative. In a speech at the opening of the 80th UN General Assembly, President Lula declared that this will be the “COP of truth”, the moment when world leaders must prove the seriousness of their commitments to the planet. For decades, the country has been trying to position itself as an emerging power based on two pillars — the environment and food.
In the environmental field, Brazil claims the role of “guardian of the Amazon” and a central player in global climate regulation, as well as a leader in biofuels and renewable energy. This position was further weakened in October 2025 with the approval by Ibama of the first licence to drill an exploratory well 500 km from the mouth of the Amazon River, on the Brazilian Equatorial Margin.
In the food sector, the country is reviving the image of the “breadbasket of the world”, based on the promise of intensified production, claiming that economic growth and environmental preservation can go hand in hand. This position is fraught with internal contradictions: although indicators point to an overall reduction of 32.4 per cent in deforestation between 2023 and 2025, the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes show a high percentage of deforested areas.
FAO announced that Brazil was removed from the hunger map in 2025, although we still have 35 million people (16.5 per cent of the population) struggling to feed themselves, according to the same source.
Half of world’s soybeans
As is well known, Brazil has become one of the main players in the agricultural commodities market (products traded on the international market). Forecasts by the OECD and FAO indicate that we will maintain this leading role in the production and export of these goods. In less than a decade, the country is expected to account for about half of the soybeans and two thirds of the sugar exported worldwide, in addition to leading exports of corn and meat.
This trend has led Brazilian agribusiness to claim that its exports are central to ensuring global food security, arguing that they would feed around 800 million people.
But this claim represents only one side of the coin. The deepening integration of Brazilian agribusiness into the global food system accentuates the interdependence between the external and internal markets and brings new challenges for the country’s development. In particular, with regard to food security, land inequality and biodiversity.
Due to the stimulus of the food crisis in the mid-2000s, the (new) growing demand for biomass, China’s significant presence in international trade, or even as a reflection of the international energy and financial crises, whatever the reasons, the Brazilian agricultural sector is experiencing continuous expansion in the areas dedicated to the production of these commodities (soybeans, coffee, corn, rice and beef, among others).
And the prices of these commodities on the world market determine food prices in the domestic market. They replace land that previously produced food for local and regional trade, impacting our food security and sovereignty and putting pressure on rural property prices.
This extreme appreciation of Brazilian agribusiness opens up a new front of social and environmental conflicts in rural areas, straining conceptions of rurality that are based on the strengthening of family farming, agroecological production, or the territorial dimension.
Growth vs preservation
At the same time, the expansion of commodity production leads to a continuous loss of forest cover. Despite the recent decline in deforestation in all Brazilian biomes in 2025, over the last 40 years, Brazil has experienced a continuous process of loss of natural areas (equivalent to 13 per cent of the territory).
Today, deforestation is present in the Cerrado, with the advance of the grain frontier, and in the Caatinga, with the expansion of agriculture and livestock farming and wind and solar energy projects.
This situation exacerbates the climate crisis. According to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimation System (SEEG), in 2023, agriculture would be responsible for 74 per cent of emissions in Brazil, 46 per cent of which would be derived from changes in land use.
Suspicious narrative
All of this leads us to be suspicious of the narrative that advocates reconciliation between economic growth and environmental preservation. The concept of land sparing (sustainable intensification), although not a scientific consensus, is repeatedly used to justify the increase in productive activities under the label of sustainability.
However, due to the rebound effect and the coupling between different activities and/or regions, this intensification is accompanied by an increase in the spatialisation of agricultural production. In other words, the same modernised grain agribusiness that intensifies its activities applies its gains to the purchase of cheaper land in frontier areas – previously occupied by livestock and/or forests – which requires further deforestation or occupation of reserves.
Reprimarisation of economy
This movement has resulted in a “reprimarisation” of our economy and exports. Since 2018, the share of primary products in total exports has been over 50 per cent, weakening Brazil’s external position by concentrating foreign exchange generation in low value-added goods and prices subject to enormous instability. This reinforces dependence on foreign markets that can bring surprises. Such as the “tariff hike” recently applied by the United States.
In addition, we recall that the productive logic of agri-food chains is increasingly associated with and conditioned by processes of financialisation of agriculture and land.
In these chains, new financial instruments targeting agriculture and natural resources are growing around the world. There were 43 in 2005, and this number jumped to 960 in 2023, according to data from Valoral Advisors. With special attention to Brazil, making rural areas a source of speculative gains, reinforcing the pressure for land control. A similar process is observed in the case of environmental assets (green bonds), based on a sustainable taxonomy that needs to be better discussed.
Conclusion
Brazil exposes contradictions when it aims to combine the position of “breadbasket of the world” and “centrality in the sustainability of the planet”. The COP 30 presidency postulates a “new generation of climate conferences” that operate as systemic platforms for accelerating processes toward a future defined by results, solidarity, and common purpose.
But the success of the conference will not be measured solely by the speeches in Belém. Rather, it will be measured by the ability of Brazil and the rest of the world to address the contradictions that today fuel hunger, accelerate deforestation and erode our climate future - requiring an urgent review of this productive and financialised model.