SAO PAULO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Farmers in Brazil have cleared land to grow soy in the new agricultural frontier known as Matopiba, according to data from Abiove, an oilseed lobby group representing global trade firms like Cargill and Bunge .
In other parts of the South American country's Cerrado savanna, soybean expansion was mainly driven by conversion of degraded pastureland into areas to grow crops, the data from the Brazil-based group shows.
Under Brazil's forestry code, farmers have to conserve between 20% and 35% of a property in the Cerrado, depending on the farm's exact location. That ratio is 80% for farms within the Amazonian biome.
In Matopiba states including Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia, which partly lie on the Cerrado biome, some 700,000 hectares (1.729 million acres) of native vegetation were transformed into soy fields in the eight-year period between 2013/2014 and 2021/2022, according to Abiove data.
Pastures, on the other hand, accounted for a smaller chunk of the soybean advance in Matopiba over the same period, with around 400,000 hectares being transformed to grow the oilseed there, the data show.
Brazil, the world's biggest soybean supplier, competes with the United States on global markets and sells its soy output to China and the European Union. They mainly use it as livestock feed.
Other states in the Cerrado, including Mato Grosso, Brazil's biggest soy producer, converted 2.8 million hectares of degraded pastureland into soybean plantations, according to Abiove data.
The Cerrado, the world's most species-rich savanna, has given way to Brazil's expanding agricultural frontier for decades.
In the eight-year period, soy planting jumped from 12.13 million hectares in the various states of the Cerrado, excluding Matopiba, to 16.35 million hectares. That is a 34.8% rise, Abiove data show.
In Matopiba, the increase was almost 50% to around 5 million hectares, Abiove said. (Reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Paul Simao)
