Atlantic forest produces half of food eaten in Brazil

Farming in the Atlantic forest area accounts for the production of more than half the food consumed in Brazil. The biome, however, emits only 26 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s agricultural sector. The data can be found in a study released this week by NGO SOS Mata Atlântica, signed by the researchers Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, Jean Paul Metzger, and Gerd Sparovek.

In the study, the Atlantic forest is said to account for 52 percent of the country’s production of food vegetables for direct consumption (except corn, soybeans, and sugarcane); 30 percent of non-food plants (fibers, latex, and cotton); 43 percent of the production of soybeans, corn, and sugarcane, food crops for direct consumption, indirect consumption (animal feed), and energy; 56 percent of animal food production; and 62 percent of animal heads (cattle, sheep, poultry, and pigs).

“This result is achieved with an area of agricultural use and greenhouse gas emissions comparatively smaller than those of the cerrado, which has become the paradigm and reference for national agriculture and cattle-raising in recent decades with the cultivation of large-scale monoculture on large properties,” researcher Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, executive director of SOS Mata Atlântica, pointed out.

Jean Paul Metzger, who is a professor at the Department of Ecology at the University of São Paulo (USP), an adviser with SOS Mata Atlântica, and one of the authors of the study, notes that the biome has historically been responsible for the nation’s food security.

“Since the beginning of Portuguese colonization in 1500, the Brazilian agricultural food system has basically hinged on the Atlantic forest for most of its history, but its current potential to sustainably contribute to the food security of Brazilians is still little known and explored.”

The biome

The Atlantic forest stretches across 17 of the 27 Brazilian states. Originally, it took up 15 percent of Brazil’s territory and was the second largest biome on the continent after the Amazon. Today, only 7.3 percent of the original Atlantic forest remains—the fifth most threatened area on the planet.

The SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation defines the Atlantic forest as a biome comprised of multiple ecosystems, ranging from swamps to tropical forests. It is home to more than 22 thousand species, almost nine thousand of them endemic, thus surpassing the biodiversity of the Amazon. The foundation also reports that as many as 383 of these animals and plants are threatened with extinction.