Amazon: Deforestation also damages soybean cultivation

Conservation of the forest also helps in the cultivation of soy in Brazil. This comes from a new study in the journal » World Development « emerged.

In the study, a team led by Avery Cohn of Tufts University in Boston analyzed the value of vegetation to soy production using two complementary approaches: how much income soy farmers lose through the destruction of forests and other ecosystems. Happening? And what revenue is generated by maintaining these ecosystems?

According to the study, extreme heat reduced soybean yields in an area of 35.8 million hectares by an average of about US$100 per hectare per year. Overall, the area is estimated to have cost an estimated $3.55 billion.

The protection of the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado savanna could prevent higher temperatures. This allows remaining intact ecosystems to be valuable. As the team calculated, the size of this value depends largely on how much land has already been converted into arable land in a given location. Where there are only a few intact forests, it is economically more economical to leave them in place: their deforestation destroys more yields through local warming than the additional arable land yields.

It does not currently apply to all regions of Brazil. However, as climate change progresses, the future value of intact ecosystems will increase dramatically – from 25 percent to 95 percent, according to the team’s calculations.