Brazil’s sustainable agriculture formula to combat deforestation and generate more income

The Wolf family farm, in the heart of Brazil’s thriving agricultural landscape, might seem like any other, with its genetically selected cows grazing at dusk and crops of soybeans, corn, and rice. But the majestic trees that rise in neat parallel rows are out of place in the more typical setting. That’s the clue to what sets it apart.

This farm, located in Nova Canaã do Norte (in the State of Mato Grosso), is, in reality, a gigantic experimental laboratory for testing multiple practices in search of ways to produce in a more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable manner. The three farms where the Wolfs raise cattle, grow crops, produce animal feed, and produce eucalyptus and teak wood are a showcase of the formula that Brazilian science has created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase productivity, and, with it, income.

Mário Wolf and his son Daniel, men of faith who pride themselves on the pioneering and innovation in their DNA, attest to this with their experience, backed by science. Experiments conducted by the Brazilian agricultural research agency Embrapa demonstrate that, with the best practices discovered in recent years, “it is even possible to produce meat with a [negative] carbon impact,” they claim, thanks to the integration of agricultural, livestock, and forestry production, which local technicians know by the acronym ILPF (Crop-Livestock-Forest Integration).

And that’s crucial in Brazil, the world’s tenth-largest economy, because here, livestock farming is the great polluting villain, unlike the United States, the European Union, or China, where the sector that emits the most greenhouse gases is coal and fossil fuels in general. A report by the Brazilian NGO Climate Observatory estimates that, if it were a country, Brazilian beef would be the seventh-largest emitter in the world, ahead of Japan.

Embrapa scientists maintain that, with their formulas, oxen and cows “can go from being part of the problem to being part of the solution,” as one of them, Rafael Pitta, explained recently at the organization’s headquarters in Sinop, 200 miles from the Wolf farm, during a press trip organized by the government agency.

Fifteen years ago, this family accepted Embrapa’s proposal to become guinea pigs without hesitation. They immediately gave up 100 hectares with no compensation, just a simple handshake.

The idea of combining livestock, crops, and trees on a single property seeks to create a virtuous cycle where each practice benefits the others, with synergies, savings, and waste recycling. The combinations are endless. The Wolfs, who are descendants of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, say they bought the Gamada farm in the late 1990s, when the land was already exhausted by intensive livestock farming. They began growing corn, rice, and soybeans to revitalize the soil. They then introduced cattle breeding and fattening, and later, eucalyptus and teak production.

Daniel details some concrete advantages of the system created in Embrapa’s laboratories to offset, or even reduce, the polluting emissions they apply to the 7,500 hectares they operate with 55 employees across three farms (half of which is usable land, with the rest protected vegetation).

“The benefits of livestock farming within agriculture are enormous. With crops, you achieve more fertile soil, so you can keep more animals in the same area. This increases meat production, while the manure serves as natural fertilizer. If you plant trees, the animals are more efficient because, like us, they like the shade. And over the years, the wood provides extra income,” he explains.

Both the Wolfs and the Embrapa scientists add other advantages: trees capture and store carbon dioxide; shade increases the quantity and quality of meat and increases the sexual precocity of cattle. Furthermore, diversifying production mitigates risks.

Another example: soil X-rays allow for precision agriculture, such as whether to increase fertilizer or other substances in needy plots or reduce them elsewhere. This increases efficiency and brings down costs. While the average in Mato Grosso is one ox or cow per hectare, on this farm it’s 10-12. These recipes may sound simple, but they are designed down to the last detail in countless parameters following scientific experiments that, before going to any farm, are tested in the controlled, open-air laboratory at Embrapa’s headquarters in Sinop.

The integrated system of agricultural, livestock, and forestry production is a kind of instruction book that offers producers a broad menu of practices for producing more without expanding pastures or crops. During the 20th century, ranchers depleted pastures and advanced inland and northward toward new lands, ruthlessly clearing the edges of the Amazon, an ecosystem vital to regulating the planet’s temperature. Thanks to technological improvements and growing environmental awareness, Brazilian agricultural production multiplied in the 21st century without taking land away from the forests, but much of it remains severely damaged.

Sustainable livestock farming is, for now, a minority activity. It covers approximately 17 million hectares, according to Embrapa estimates. Of the country’s 180 million hectares dedicated to pasture, 20% suffers severe degradation and 40% moderate degradation, according to an Embrapa study published in the scientific journal Land in 2024. That analysis concluded that nearly 30 million hectares have the potential to be recovered through methods such as combining livestock, crops, and forestry production, adaptation to low-carbon agriculture, or other practices.

The main challenge for other farms to adopt the model and replicate it on a large scale is resistance from farmers. Wolf Sr. points out that “the biggest problem is getting it into the producer’s head, getting them to understand that this system improves their business,” before emphasizing that embracing sustainable livestock farming requires investment, planning, and a long-term strategy.

The patriarch adds that his family “has always been open to new technologies,” but that the concentration of the business in large corporate groups, coupled with the lack of awareness about these innovations among small producers, hinders the expansion of a model that has brought them prosperity. Embrapa has found that model farms like this one spread the experience to their neighbors. But the pace is slower than the climate crisis requires.

The Brazilian government wants to showcase its environmental achievements to the world during the upcoming U.N. climate summit. At the urging of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, COP30 will be held in the Amazon, in the city of Belém, in November. Lula wants leaders and environmentalists to experience firsthand the world’s largest tropical rainforest — key to absorbing CO2 and mitigating global warming — and the many challenges involved in preserving it. He demands that those who illegally plunder it be prosecuted, but with economic development to lift its inhabitants out of poverty and without curbing an agricultural sector that, as Brazilians often repeat, “feeds the world” with its exports of meat and soybeans for animal feed.

The Wolfs, like many of their neighbors, came to these lands from the south in the 1970s to colonize and prosper. In the early years, when environmental awareness was scarce or nonexistent, logging was the big business. No law prohibited it at the time. Today, the state of Mato Grosso is the epicenter of the agricultural sector, the driving force of the Brazilian economy.

Since this region is legally part of the Amazon, even though it’s in the transition zone between the tropical rainforest and the Cerrado tropical savanna, the law imposes limits on the area of production. When Brazilians say they have the toughest environmental legislation in the world, they mean that every rural property in the Amazon is required to reserve 80% of its land for native vegetation. That is, they can only have pastures or crops on the remaining 20%. Much of the state of Mato Grosso and other areas were deforested before the law came into effect.

Producers who scrupulously comply with the law believe that the just pay for the sinners; that the criminal practices of some of their peers harm the entire sector. Hence, they consider it a true affront that European countries — which razed their forests to industrialize in the 19th century — have passed a law within the European Union that closes the door to meat, soy, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, rubber, and timber unless they prove they come from lands that have not been deforested. The law’s entry into force has been postponed for one year, until 2026.

For the Wolfs, looking after their workers is essential. Brazilian agriculture is struggling to retain labor. That’s why all their employees have health insurance, earn at least two minimum wages, and work on air-conditioned tractors. They also organize activities for their families. Going birdwatching is one of the most recent. Wolf Jr. says that the specialist who recently came to census the birds “discovered six species in the normal pastures and 46 species in the mixed pastures.” He considers this further proof, were any needed, that the direction his family took years ago is the right one.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition