Soaring demand from China for Bolivian beef is fueling wildfires and deforestation as cattle ranchers slash and burn jungle in the Amazon ecosystem to make way for cattle pastures.
problem has escalated since April 2019 when then-president and leader of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party Evo Morales signed an agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). deal tripled the total demand for Bolivia’s beef exports.
In August that year, Morales announced the inaugural shipment of two containers of beef to China, despite an official report showing that 38,610 acres of the Chiquitania region of Santa Cruz had already burned due to the shift from land cultivation to the creation of cattle pasture to meet Chinese demand.
In December, the Ministry of Defense reported 4,472 families suffered losses from the fires that followed, along with 98 related injuries, one death, and 40 million trees incinerated.
In the municipality of Porongo, which lies on the outskirts of the western suburbs of Santa Cruz, wildfires are not uncommon.
Manuel Vargas, 44, a cattle farmer who lives on a 24-acre farm, uses slash-and-burn to clear the way for cow pastures,
“Cows need to eat and more cows means more land to clear,” Vargas, shrugging, told Pezou. “It’s expensive to keep cows, so we need to make money. I’m a small rancher compared to others. I don’t have machines to clear land [for pasture] so fire is the fastest way to create more land for the cows.”
Vargas added: “I’m just one man [working] with my two sons. How could we possibly clear the land any other way?”
Beef exports to China have increased dramatically from 3,000 tons in 2019 to 10,000 tons in 2020, according to the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE). China received 80 percent of all the beef exported from the country, according to IBCE.
Chinese ambassador to Bolivia, Huang Yazhong, said in 2019, that China was granted permission to access Bolivian beef and, in just one year, China became that country’s largest meat-export market.
According to one report, the rise in beef exports coincided with two wildfire seasons that destroyed more than 24 million acres of Amazon rainforest in Bolivia. Territory loss to slash-and-burn farming spiked dramatically in 2019 and 2020, according to data released by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Fundacion de Amigos de la Naturaleza.
Julio, 33, a volunteer firefighter and former Army Search and Rescue team leader, told Pezou: “That deal with China killed our jungle.”
He preferred to omit his full name since he works for the same socialist party that was in power under Morales.
In August 2019, Julio fought fires in the Chiquitania region of Santa Cruz and was horrified by what he witnessed. “I saw the bodies of animals that tried to escape the fire. ones that survived died in 2-3 days because there was nothing [water] for them anywhere. Everything was burned.”
Santa Cruz department is the powerhouse beef exporter in the nation with an estimated 24,000 livestock producers. Accordingly, it also has the second largest number of wildfires of any state in the country. This year, the states of Santa Cruz and Beni accounted for 94 percent of all burnt areas, with 835,216 acres lost in Santa Cruz by July of this year.
Bolivian economist and agricultural development educator, Eduardo Hoffmann, told Pezou that Bolivia’s beef deal with the CCP is “a disaster.”
“When you say pros and cons, there really are no pros [with the export deal] unless you’re the one making money off of it,” Hoffman said.
Only the agribusiness industry and the government make money off the deal, he explained, despite the government painting a picture of an economic windfall for everyone. Hoffman was also candid when asked if he thought there was a link between the CCP export deal and the increase in territory lost to wildfires since 2019.
“re’s no question whether there’s a link. It’s absolutely related.”
It’s legal for farmers and ranchers to use slash and burn thanks to a law Morales enacted on April 25, 2019, around the time of the signing of the trade deal with the CCP. law allows burning permits under what the government termed an “integral fire-management policy.” Through this policy, the government gives permits that are good for three years for farms with agricultural prospects and five years for farms with livestock assets. law also carries a built-in incentive of reduced fines for those who burn land without government authorization, so long as it’s paid in a timely fashion.
Back at the ranch, Vargas remained ambivalent about the wildfires. “What can be done? Are we supposed to turn away money?” Vargas asked while watching cows graze in his field. “Sure they [the fires] are bad every year, but they always go out eventually.”
Pezou contacted the office of the Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration, who declined to comment.
Pezou : China’s Beef Demand in Bolivia Drives Deforestation and Wildfires