Brazil developing its remote interior with controversial Soy Highway and Belo Monte Dam, facilitating farms and deforestation

Brazil's project to pave the remote "Soy Highway" (BR-163) is nearly complete. The Soy Highway connects new plantations in deforested Amazon regions to the outside world. It is schedule to be totally paved by 2015, right now it is said to be at around 80%.  A 2004 Economist article describes the old road as it existed then unpaved as a "river of mud" in rainy season on which a 1000-mile drive from Santarem to Cuiaba (see map below) could take weeks. With a new surface, the road will carry millions of dollars of farm products to the rest of Brazil and the world.

Speeding up agricultural development and deforestation
So much of Brazil's massive agricultural economy takes place in vast newly-deforested regions cleared within the last few decades. Staggering areas of Amazon rainforest and Cerrado dry forest have been razed and are now cattle ranches and plantations of soybeans, sugar, etc. Brazil has the world's highest deforestation rate, over twice the rate of the next highest country, Indonesia.

The Soy Highway addresses the biggest obstacle Brazil's exploding farming sector currently faces: lack of transportation infrastructure to rapidly deliver products from remote, newly-created farmlands to the rest of Brazil, where food processing and exporting takes place.

On the maps below, notice the Soy Highway cuts through the states of Para and Mato Grosso; these two states led Brazil in deforestation in 2013. Environmentalists like Philip Fearnside say the Soy Highway will just exacerbate deforestation. Para likes in the Amazon rainforest and includes the Amazon delta.

Along the highway, tribes and slavery-like conditionsNumerous indigenous tribes live along the Soy Highway, and many have been employed in the plantations that have sprouted up. In these areas, the highest number of cases of slavery-like conditions in Brazil have been cited, with Para state leading the country with 123 cases in 2005 involving over 3000 people.

US company Cargill pioneered soy in the Amazon -- foreseeing the Soy HighwayUS agribusiness company Cargill stands to benefit hugely from the Soy Highway. Cargill foresaw the paving of the Soy Highway and pioneered soy agribusinesses in Para in 2003 by constructing a $20 million soy port/processing plant on the Amazon River. This dramatically increased soy production.

Cargill battled with Greenpeace which reported slave labor conditions under Cargill and also that Cargill deforested indigenous tribal rainforest. Despite these controversies, Cargill remains in Santarem.

The interior: a new frontier for Brazil
Brazil for most of its history was called a "civilzation of crabs" because nearly all settlements were on the coast. These new farming areas are the reason Brazilians decided to delve inward into the areas they neglected for such a long time.

I've never eaten a lot of SPAM, but when I look at the cans they often say "product of Brazil" -- a testament to its beef production.

This graphic shows the sections which are paved