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“You’ve got the logger that goes first, then along
comes the cattle rancher and the cycle evolves until
Sustainability . eventually there are soybeans where there used to
measurements, .data . be cows,” says Kory Melby, owner of the Brazilian
Ag Consulting Service in the state of Goiás.
availability .vary .by .country Admitting that the problem exists, the Brazilian

government is warning lumber harvesters and
Foreign . markets . for . U .S . . farm . cattle ranchers that they won’t get away with
commodities . are . changing . rapidly . clear-cutting and using land that the govern-
as . consumers . increasingly . want . to . ment is trying to protect.
know .if .the .food .they .eat .is .sustainably . “Before, it wasn’t easy to know who was destroy-
sourced . . That . requires . more . ing the Amazon, but now the (government) uses
documentation .that .the .production . satellite technology to monitor the region, iden-

methods . aren’t . contributing . to . tifying and providing evidence to penalize the
deforestation . and . global . warming . . people responsible for illegal deforestation,” the
government says in a slick, computer-animated
But . the . sustainability . expectations . film posted on the internet.
don’t . stop . there . . They . include .

details . on . dozens . of . other . metrics . The film shows loggers cutting down trees and
ranchers grazing cattle in the forest as greedy
like .fair .pay, .biodiversity, .food .waste . businessmen skulk in the background, only to be
and .nutrition . . spotted and targeted by cameras above them. A
narrator warns: “Whoever destroys the Amazon
Unfortunately, . uniform . data . is . not . won’t be able to hide from the government.”
available .in .every .country .and .some .

experts . question . whether . you . can . Representatives of the Brazilian ag sector
accurately . compare . sustainable . downplay the significance of farms on defor-
ested lands as a very small minority among the
production . measurements . around . vast majority of responsible and legal producers,
the .globe . but the stain they leave on all Brazilian farmers
– legal or not – presents a real and potentially
Indicators . also . are . used . to . long-term problem, says Marcello Brito, presi-

compare . countries . and . to . track . dent of the board of directors of the Brazilian
progress . in . a . particular . country . . Agribusiness Association.
One . study . published . in . the . journal .
Farmers don’t need to produce in Amazon forest
Nature . developed . food . system . regions to be penalized for the actions of farm-
sustainability . scores . for . countries . ers that do, he said in a recent blog post. Import-
based . on . 27 . different . indicators . ers often don’t know about the region, but just

from .agricultural .emissions .to .water . the nation it comes from.
usage, .food .supply .variability, .food . “We have always been among the top three or
waste .and .obesity . . five in the leadership of environmental processes
in the world,” he said. “However, today, Brazil
is not part of any international commission that

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