The Role of High-Volume Ranches as Cattle Suppliers: Supply Chain Connections and Cattle Production in Mato Grosso

Raquel Carvalho,Holly K Gibbs,Lisa Rausch,Jacob Munger

doi:10.3390/land10101098

Abstract

Brazil’s zero-deforestation Cattle Agreements (CAs) have influenced the supply chain but their impact on deforestation has been limited in part because slaughterhouses monitor deforestation only on the properties they buy from directly. Consequently, deforestation continues to enter the supply chain indirectly from properties that are not monitored. Knowledge gaps and data limitations have made it challenging to close this loophole and achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation. Here we leverage our large property-level supply chain database that links together six years of records from the Animal Transport Guide (GTA), high-resolution satellite data, property boundaries, and land cover data to quantify different types of supply chain connections and characterize cattle production in Mato Grosso. We find that a relatively small number of high-volume suppliers—defined as the top 5% of cattle suppliers in terms of the volume of cattle sold–supplied 50–60% of the total volume purchased by major slaughterhouses. One-fourth of high-volume direct suppliers cleared forest between 2009–2018, and 90% of them also bought from indirect suppliers with deforestation, leading these high-volume direct suppliers to act as funnels for deforestation into the supply chain. Because they serve as important hubs in the supply chain, high-volume suppliers may represent a key starting point to expand the CAs to cover large numbers of indirect suppliers.

Highlights

The expansion of ranching in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes began in the 1960s when governmental plans to occupy forested frontiers up to the North of Brazil encouraged private companies and colonizers to establish properties and raise cattle [1,2]
We focus on the role of high-volume suppliers as major hubs in the cattle supply chain [18]
High volume suppliers sold a disproportionate amount of cattle for slaughter but the number of cattle sold by these properties each year varied widely

Summary

Introduction

The expansion of ranching in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes began in the 1960s when governmental plans to occupy forested frontiers up to the North of Brazil encouraged private companies and colonizers to establish properties and raise cattle [1,2]. The area covered by pastures expanded by 70% in the Amazon and 12% in the Cerrado [7,8,9]. This aggressive expansion has led to increased rates in deforestation that, after an alarming peak of 27.7 km in 2004, triggered the implementation of several legal measures including the declaration of protected areas, command-and-control operations, embargoes of properties, and implementation of mandatory registration in the Rural.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion