page_title: Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
section_title: Causes of deforestation
hierarchical_section_title: Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest / Causes of deforestation
caption_attribution_description: English: In this image, intact forest is deep green, while cleared areas are tan (bare ground) or light green (crops, pasture, or occasionally, second-growth forest). The fish bone pattern of small clearings along new roads is the beginning of one of the common deforestation trajectories in the Amazon.
context_page_description: The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world, covering an area of 5,500,000 km². It represents over half of the planet's rainforests, and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60%, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and France.
  The cattle sector of the Brazilian Amazon, incentivized by the international beef and leather trades, has been responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region, or about 14% of the world's total annual deforestation, making it the world's largest single driver of deforestation. The vast majority of agricultural activity resulting in deforestation was subsidized by government tax revenue. By 1995, 70% of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970 had been converted to cattle ranching.
context_section_description: Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest can be attributed to many different factors at local, national, and international levels. The rainforest is seen as a resource for cattle pasture, valuable hardwoods, housing space, farming space (especially for soybeans), road works (such as highways and smaller roads), medicines and human gain. Trees are usually cut down illegally.
  A 2004 World Bank paper and a 2009 Greenpeace report found that the cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon, supported by the international beef and leather trades, was responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region, or about 14% of the world's total annual deforestation, making it the largest single driver of deforestation in the world. According to a 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 70% of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture.
  Additional deforestation in the Amazon has resulted from farmers clearing land for small-scale subsistence agriculture or for mechanized cropland. Scientists using NASA satellite data found in 2006 that clearing for mechanized cropland had become a significant force in Brazilian Amazon deforestation. This change in land use may alter the region's climate. Researchers found that in 2004, a peak year of deforestation, more than 20 percent of the Mato Grosso state's forests were converted to cropland. In 2005, soybean prices fell by more than 25 percent and some areas of Mato Grosso showed a decrease in large deforestation events, suggesting that the rise and fall of prices for other crops, beef and timber may also have a significant impact on future land use in the region.
  Until 2006, a major driver of forest loss in the Amazon was the cultivation of soy, mainly for export and production of biodiesel and animal feed; as soybean prices have risen, soy farmers pushed northwards into forested areas of the Amazon. However, a private sector agreement referred to as the Soy Moratorium has helped drastically reduce the deforestation linked to soy production in the region. In 2006, a number of major commodity trading companies such as Cargill agreed to not purchase soybeans produced in the Brazilian Amazon in recently deforested areas. Before the moratorium, 30 percent of soy field expansion had occurred through deforestation, contributing to record deforestation rates. After eight years of the moratorium, a 2015 study found that although soy production area had expanded another 1.3 million hectares, only about 1 percent of the new soy expansion had come at the expense of forest. In response to the moratorium, farmers were choosing to plant on already cleared land.
  The needs of soy farmers have been used to validate some controversial transportation projects that have developed in the Amazon. The first two highways, the Belém-Brasília (1958) and the Cuiaba-Porto Velho (1968), were the only federal highways in the Legal Amazon to be paved and passable year-round before the late 1990s. These two highways are said to be "at the heart of the 'arc of deforestation'", which at present is the focal point area of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The Belém-Brasília highway attracted nearly two million settlers in the first twenty years. The success of the Belém-Brasília highway in opening up the forest was reenacted as paved roads continued to be developed, unleashing the irrepressible spread of settlement. The completion of the roads was followed by a wave of resettlement; these settlers had a significant effect on the forest as well.
  A 2013 paper found that the more rainforest is logged in the Amazon, the less precipitation reaches the area and so the lower the yield per hectare becomes. Thus for Brazil as a whole, there is no economic gain to be made by logging and selling trees and using the logged land for pastoral purposes.
  A September 2016 Amazon Watch report concludes that imports of crude oil by the US are driving rainforest destruction in the Amazon and releasing significant greenhouse gases.
  The European Uni
caption: Fires, and deforestation in Rondônia
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