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The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has made it a priority to protect the Amazon rainforest, a key requirement for the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur. One year after taking office, his efforts have halved deforestation in the Amazon. However, the cost of this achievement is the sacrifice of the Cerrado, a savanna that has already lost half of its natural vegetation due to intensive soy and corn agriculture.
The Cerrado, a vast savannah in the heart of Brazil, contains 5% of the world's biodiversity. Currently, deforestation is progressing at a rate twice as fast as in the Amazon. Located east of the Amazon rainforest, on the high plateaus between the states of Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, the Cerrado has been transformed into extensive fields of soy and corn cultivation. This fragile ecosystem, sacrificed almost without being noticed, is at risk of disappearing.
Brazilian agricultural production reached a record level this year, especially in the west of the state of Bahia, in the region known as 'Matopiba', where agricultural trade has been dominant since the 1980s. Here, intensive agriculture has replaced much part of the native vegetation. 50% of the vegetation cover of the vast territory of the Cerrado, which covers around two million square kilometers, the equivalent of four times the size of France, has already been destroyed.
Unlike the Amazon, where the law requires protecting 80% of the territory, in the Cerrado only the conservation of 20% of the occupied area is required, which makes it attractive for agribusiness. Agricultural production in this region is mainly exported to France.
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