September 11, 2026 · NASA Earth Observatory · 2 min read
Converting Savannahs into Soybeans
Brazil's cerrado has long been labeled the world's most biologically rich savannah. Over the past decades, much of it has been plowed under to make room for soybeans.
Brazil's cerrado has long been labeled the world's most biologically rich savannah. Nestled between the Amazon and the coastal Atlantic Forest, the region is home to almost 1,000 species of birds and nearly 300 mammals, including the endangered jaguar, maned wolf, and cerrado fox. But over the past few decades, the tropical grassland savannah has been plowed under to make room for a lucrative, protein-packed cash crop: soybeans.
The top export of Brazil, soybeans represent 90 percent of all agriculture in the cerrado, which covers around one-fifth of the country (larger than California and Alaska combined). The majority of the production comes from the Matopiba region, an acronym for the confluence of the four Brazilian states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia. Planted along the border of western Bahia, soybeans (which derive 35 to 38 percent of their calories from proteins) allow farmers to pack in more protein per hectare than any other large-scale crop.
From 2010 to 2015, soy exports from Matopiba doubled from 3.5 to 7.1 million tons. Reports predict that the country will become the largest producer of soybeans in the world by 2025, surpassing the United States.
But the soybean farm expansion is threatening the biological diversity of the cerrado. From 2000 to 2014, agricultural land use in the cerrado increased by 87 percent, with the majority of plots wiping out native vegetation. In April 2017, Brazil's top two scientific associations wrote to the government asking for public policies on sustainable use of this land. Reports state that "only 8 percent of the cerrado is currently off-limits to development or agriculture." Organizations are working to create sustainable practices of food production with environmental protection.
What this means for a Legal Reserve
The Cerrado makes a point that is often left out of the conversation: deforestation is not only the Amazon. In the savanna, the law requires a smaller Legal Reserve — usually 20% of the property, or 35% when the Cerrado lies inside the Legal Amazon — so each hectare kept standing carries even more weight.
At Neutraza, each reserve's biome comes from its registration and is checked against official maps. To tell native vegetation apart from pasture or green crops — which also look "green" from space — we cross the analysis with MapBiomas land-use data and with INPE's deforestation alerts (DETER) and annual mapping (PRODES).
Protecting one hectare of native Cerrado means protecting exactly what soy tends to replace.
Source: Converting Savannahs into Soybeans. Public domain text and image from a U.S. government agency.