Brazil

Mega-traders Cargill and Bunge are exporting soya from an agricultural estate in Brazil with a long record of violence, illegality, and environmental destruction, a Greenpeace International investigation has uncovered

Brazil’s Federal Police have launched an investigation, dubbed “Operation Far West,” to crack down on an alleged massive land grab by an agribusiness collective in western Bahia, one of Brazil’s largest soy producing regions.

At a briefing to discuss the numbers, Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles said the rise in deforestation showed the need for a new strategy to combat illegal logging, mining and land grabbing, which he said were to blame for the increase in deforestation.

Brazil and Japan plotted a farming revolution in Mozambique. But instead of sowing soya, they planted seeds of opposition.

In a part of Brazil plagued by land conflicts and violence against indigenous tribes, prosecutors say they are pushing major grains traders and meatpackers to stop buying from farmers and ranchers charged with crimes against natives.

With fires on their Cerrado properties, Harvard’s and TIAA’s deforestation exposure appears to be growing.

With very low interest rates having taken root across asset classes and investors abiding in their hunt for higher yields, the world’s largest manager of global farmland, Nuveen, says the season may be ripe for a strategic allocation to the $2.3 trillion market for U.S. farm real estate.

Altamiran Ribeiro, a Brazilian land rights activist, told an audience at John Hopkins University about the land takeovers on behalf of corporations in Brazil and the long-term consequences on local communities and the environment.

Tenemos pruebas de que los incendios del Cerrado también están vinculados a otros intereses financieros con sede en Estados Unidos: el Fondo de Dotación de la Universidad de Harvard y el TIAA, el fondo de pensiones privado que invierte en nombre de millones de profesores, académicos, enfermeras y trabajadores del gobierno en todo el país.

The student group Divest Harvard hosted a day of events calling attention to Harvard’s ownership of Brazilian land and reigniting its calls for the school to sell those holdings in the name of environmentalism.

Satellite maps show the connection between Harvard and TIAA's farmland acquisitions in Brazil's Cerrado and the massive number of fires that have been burning in the region since July of this year.

The Vermont Pension Investment Committee has invested $100 million in the Nuveen Global Farmland Fund, which aims to make farmland acquisitions averaging $20m across the US, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Poland, Romania and Chile.