Soy is an important base ingredient of the world’s meat. Approximately three quarters of the world’s soy goes into animal feed.
But this soy production has left an enormous scar on the Earth’s surface. More than one million square kilometers of the planet – equivalent to the total combined area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands – are dedicated to growing soy according to some estimates.
In South America, soy and cattle interests have converted vast areas of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s Cerrado, the Argentine Chaco, Bolivian lowland forests and the Atlantic Forest in Paraguay from diverse native ecosystems into soy monocultures. From 2001-2010, an average of approximately four million hectares of forests were destroyed each year, mostly for soy and cattle.
Ecostorm contributed information, videos and photography to a major investigative project launched in February 2017 by US-based non-profit Mighty Earth. The New York Times published a major report on the investigation simultaneously.
Ecostorm has previously investigated the intensive livestock feed sector globally, including major reports on fishmeal in Peru and Thailand.
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