Posted on 18 July 2011
By Aldem Bourscheit,
WWF-Brazil
Cristalina municipal district is a large
agribusiness center, home to some 1,500
monoculture irrigation plots and a dozen
settlements of families who came from all
over Brazil to grow vegetables and cereals
to supply large consumer markets.
William Souto is in charge of the local
farmers’ union in Poço Grande settlement,
where plots measuring up to 20 hectares
yearly produce nearly 15,000 tons of corn,
beans, cassava, sorghum, rice, soy, honey,
milk, squash, vegetables and herbs. These
products are sold in supermarkets in the
Federal District (Brasilia and its surroundings)
and other states; some of the organic production
goes to local schools and kindergartens.
In this farming settlement,
conservation regulations limit the amount
of vegetation that can be removed and how
much water can be extracted from the nearby
São Marcos River. “Green areas are
needed, and they do not hurt farm production.
They provide shade, recreation and rest.
And they improve the climate. The forest
is conserved by every one of the 800 families
who joined the union. There is no competition
between production and conservation,” emphasizes
Souto.
Even as things change, there is opportunity
to protect nature and all the services it
provides. Part of the forest in Poço
Grande settlement will soon be flooded by
the Batalha hydropower dam, located 100
kilometers to the south. “There will be
impacts, and that means work for us, to
replant what is degraded. But it also means
the opportunity for us to sell food directly
to hotels and other new business to be established
after the lake is full,” says Souto.
Meeting new standards
Rubens Valentini is an economist and agronomist
from São Paulo who has been farming
in the central Federal District since the
1970s. He achieved commercial success through
pig farming, and today runs an operation
with 3,700 sows birthing some 200 piglets
a week. An operation of this size is a huge
economic benefit for the 100 employees,
but it can have serious environmental impacts.
The farm is now being
expanded, following European criteria for
friendlier animal breeding. Feeding is entirely
controlled by computers and the effluents
flow to large tanks where they are dissolved
and cleaned. By the end of the year, there
will be up to 2,000 cubic meters per day
of methane gas captured and used to produce
power and heat for the nurseries. The nearby
forests shelter vigorous native Cerrado
vegetation and important headwaters, and
are protected by fence to keep away some
400 head of beef cattle. “Today it is no
longer necessary to destroy in order to
produce. Keeping those areas caused me no
loss and they have been preserved for 30
years now,” says Valentini.
Legislation key to conservation
According to WWF-Brazil’s Cerrado-Pantanal
Program Officer, Michael Becker, complying
with legislation is possible and necessary
for farming. “Native vegetation and healthy
ecosystems provide services that farmers
depend on – pollination, water protection
and climate control. Nature does this for
free, but only if we protect it. That’s
why it’s necessary to strengthen the Cerrado
land-use legislation, which presently offers
too many opportunities for legal deforestation,”
he says. “We want businesses, farmers and
governments to work together to connect
and protect forest fragments and create
sustainable landscapes for the benefit of
the country.”
