The cattle realm: a new phase in the livestock colonization of Brazilian Amazonia

Ranching in the Amazon spread at an unprecedented rate over the last five years. This brief documents this recent growth and argues that it now requires additional and undivided attention on the part of government authorities, the market chain, financial institutions, scientists and civil society organisations. <br /><br />The paper presents a variety of facts and figures showing the industry's growth, which includes data on world beef production and exports, the principle importers of Brazilian beef, cattle herd sizes in the Legal Amazon and Brazil and changes in cattle slaughter, amongst others. <br /><br />Key points include: in 2007, for the first time, the Legal Amazon passed the historical threshold of 10 million head of cattle slaughtered, with an increase of 46% over the figure in 2004 the cattle herd in the Legal Amazon is now approximately 74 million or 3.3 head per inhabitant, triple the national average one third of Brazilian fresh beef exports came from the Amazon in 2007 the majority of nearly 200 slaughter houses in operation in the Amazon should be considered illegal given working conditions<br /> the explosion of ranching in the Amazon over the last decade was responsible for a volume of emissions of greenhouse gasses of between 9 and 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, comparable in volume to two years of emissions from the United States the establishment of criteria and standards can contribute to the transparency and structuring of the chain, but its implementation tends to depend on the effective establishment of a reference system for verification and certification over the entire agricultural and livestock sector