Ranchers Are Using Toxic Herbicides to Clear Forests in Brazil

A destructive cocktail of herbicides, including a key compound in the lethal defoliant Agent Orange, is being used to chemically deforest huge areas of Brazil as ranchers there seek new, less detectable ways to clear forests for grazing cattle.

A report, published Tuesday by the environmental advocacy group Mighty Earth, with reporting from Reporter Brasil, says some of the deforestation is connected to the Brazilian beef companies, including JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, and that beef raised on the land has ended up in major grocery chains in Brazil.  

João Gonçalves, a Brazil-based senior director with Mighty Earth, called the tactic “a devastating new war on nature, being waged by the beef industry.”

In 2022, Brazilian authorities got a tip that a prominent rancher in the state of Mato Grosso was using a mix of 25 herbicides, including 2,4-D—one of the major components in Agent Orange—to kill trees in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. Earlier this year, the investigators fined the rancher, Claudecy Oliveira Lemes, the equivalent of about $520 million—the largest fine ever imposed in the region—for using the mix to destroy more than 80,000 hectares of forest. Investigators based their case against Lemes on soil samples and aerial videos, according to Reporter Brasil. 

The Mighty Earth investigation found that one of Lemes’ ranches is linked to supply chains that provide beef to JBS and other Brazilian beef companies, and the four top supermarket chains in Brazil. JBS, the world’s biggest beef producer with major operations in the United States, did not respond to requests for comment.  

The beef industry has long been linked to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, and to the neighboring Cerrado region, considered the most biologically diverse savannah in the world. The Pantanal, south of the Amazon, appears to be the next frontier.

Under the current Brazilian government, which has made reducing deforestation a priority, rates of forest destruction have slowed in the Amazon, but have ticked up in the Cerrado and Pantanal.

“We’re protecting the Amazon, but we’re leaving all the other biomes unprotected,” said Mariana Perozzi Gameiro, a consultant for Mighty Earth who worked on the report. “The Pantanal is the new target.”

Brazil’s environmental agencies, advocacy groups and researchers typically rely on satellite data to detect deforestation, which is usually accomplished with machinery or deliberately set fires. In this case, Lemes allegedly dropped the chemical mix from a small airplane. The chemicals in the mix, including 2,4-D, are legal for agricultural use in Brazil, but not on trees.

“The traditional deforestation is easily seen by satellite images,” Gameiro said, explaining that 2,4-D is harder to detect because it works slowly. “First the leaves fall, then it progresses.” 

In Brazil, home to some of the most critical biomes on the planet, beef and soy production are responsible for between 70 and 90 percent of deforestation. (Most of the soy grown in Brazil is fed to cattle.) The country is the world’s largest beef exporter. Globally, appetites for beef continue to grow, and meat consumption is projected to keep climbing 50 percent within 25 years. 

Cattle is, by far, the most greenhouse gas intensive livestock and recent research has concluded that emissions from food production, largely from beef, will rise 60 percent by mid-century, putting global climate goals beyond reach.

The Pantanal and other parts of Brazil are currently suffering from major fires that the Brazilian government has blamed on deliberate, criminal fire-setting. According to Brazilian authorities, the Pantanal has experienced a nearly 4,000-percent increase in fires in August over the same month last year. 

“Right now, Brazil is ablaze with forest fires raging across the country, caused largely by criminal activity driven by agriculture,” Gonçalves said in a press release. “The Pantanal cannot withstand both fires and rampant chemical deforestation, which not only strips trees bare over vast areas, but poisons whole ecosystems.”