🐮 Ignoring the cow in the room

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Amazon agriculture hit hardest by climate events it helps cause

Producing millions of tons of soybeans every year, the city of Sorriso, in the central-western state of Mato Grosso, is officially nicknamed the National Agribusiness Capital. But there, and in other grain-producing municipalities, severe climate events made 2024 a year to forget.

Intense dry spells affected nearly two-thirds of the country, while more than half of Brazil’s 772 Amazonian municipalities (including Sorriso) spent the entirety of 2024 under some degree of drought. This had a damaging effect on harvests, with delays in planting causing a 7.2% drop in production of grains, legumes and oilseeds across the year.

At the start of this year, meanwhile, soybean production in Sorriso was disrupted due to too much rain.

However, amid the debate about the below-par output in 2024, or the harvesting delays in 2025, there was little discussion or acknowledgment that the climate problems faced by agribusiness are partly self-inflicted.

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