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Mapping the deforestation risk
of Brazilian beef exports
New data on Trase maps Brazilian beef, offal, and live cattle exports for 2015-2017, showing the links to deforestation.
This brief describes that trade, identifying the major markets served by Brazil’s US$6 billion beef export industry,
and highlighting the link between these exports and 65,000-75,000 hectares of deforestation per year. These data
are freely available on trase.earth

Brazil is the world’s biggest exporter of beef products,

Because of this clearance - plus the gases cattle emit

exporting around 1.4 million tonnes per year to retailers

when digesting grass - the cattle sector is responsible

and manufacturers around the world. While this trade

for around half of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions,

worth almost US$ 6 billion is important for the Brazilian

making it a significant contributor to the country’s

economy, it has come at a price for the country’s forests,

climate impact. The sector is also associated with cases of

local and traditional peoples and biodiversity.

land conflict, slave labour and displacement of traditional
communities.

In the Amazon and Cerrado regions - two of Brazil’s most
important regions both for biodiversity and social diversities

While these impacts have long been associated with cattle

- two-thirds of deforestation is for cattle pasture. Overall,

ranching, the complex nature of cattle supply chains has

an estimated 260,000 – 580,000 hectares of forest are lost to

made it difficult to directly link deforestation and other

the expansion of cattle ranching each year.

impacts to companies and consumer markets.

Main importers of Brazilian beef and live cattle (2017)

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companies. The largest of these markets in 2017 were
Hong Kong and mainland China, which together
accounted for 38% of Brazilian beef exports by volume.
The deforestation risk linked to exported beef varies
depending on where in Brazil the cattle were raised. Trase
data can be used to identify these impacts for buyers
across different supply chains. For example, imports
to Hong Kong (23% of Brazilian beef exports) were
PHOTO: DANIEL BELTRA / GREENPEACE

associated with a significantly higher deforestation risk
per tonne than imports to mainland China (15%). This is

New Trase data changes that, bringing unprecedented

because significantly more of Hong Kong’s beef imports

transparency to Brazil’s exports of beef, highlighting the

come from the Amazon, while mainland China’s imports

deforestation and other risks that buyers are exposed to.

come more from further south in Brazil, from states such

The new data maps the supply chains of Brazilian beef

as São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Mato Grosso do Sul.

and live cattle exports from the municipalities where
cattle are raised through to the importing countries –

In 2017, exports to Hong Kong were linked to 27%

and identifies 210,000 hectares of deforestation linked to

of all export-associated deforestation risk (18,000

those exports between 2015-2017 . This is the loss of an area

hectares), while exports to China were linked to 7% of

larger than London in just three years.

deforestation risk (4,700 hectares). Russia, although only
the fourth biggest importer in 2017, had the third highest

Importantly, these deforestation figures are broken

deforestation risk, with 10,000 hectares.

down, revealing the deforestation risk that each
exporter, importer, and consumer country is exposed
to – that is to say, the estimated area of deforestation
(in hectares) which is associated with each buyer (see box

Beef deforestation risk per municipality (2017)

‘How does Trase work?’). Using this data, international
buyers of Brazilian beef can estimate their exposure
to deforestation in their sourcing regions and identify
priorities and options for action.
Where possible, the new data include indirect suppliers
– the farms where cattle were raised, rather than simply
the last property they came from before being sent either
to a slaughterhouse or for live export (the direct supplier).
These indirect suppliers make up an important but
previously invisible part of the supply chain and represent
a major breakthrough in the work of Trase.

EXPORT MARKETS AND DEFORESTATION RISK
Trase maps exports of Brazilian beef products to 150
international markets, via thousands of importing

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New risks from the EU-Mercosur treaty?
At the end of June 2019, the European Union (EU) signed a free-trade agreement with the
Mercosur trading bloc: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. This included a commitment
to increase beef imports from the region by more than one-third (an additional 99,000
tonnes/year). Brazil today supplies more than half of all Mercosur’s beef exports to the EU
(around 100,000 tonnes), so the agreement is expected to boost Brazilian beef exports. Trase
data can be used to scan the potential deforestation risks linked to this trade.
The EU currently sources cattle from many regions in Brazil, with the greatest quantities
coming from the Pampas in the far south, the southern Cerrado savannah and around the
Amazon–Cerrado transition zone in the west. Between 2015 and 2017, EU beef imports were
linked to 2,900-3,600 hectares of deforestation risk each year.
As the Brazil-EU beef trade grows, Trase’s data, updated annually, offer a powerful way to
monitor the sources of beef exports from Brazil to the EU, and any change in the deforestation
risk that EU companies and consumers are exposed to.

Deforestation risk: main importers
of Brazilian beef and live cattle (2017)

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Top 5 beef and live cattle
exporters in Brazil (2017)

Deforestation risk of the top 5 beef
exporters in Brazil (2017)

By identifying the origins of exported beef and other

an even larger, and above average share of the total

cattle products, the Trase data also allows us to compare

deforestation risk for beef product exports in 2017: 36%

the deforestation linked to exports and to the domestic

(24,000 ha). This is because JBS exports a large share of

market. Overall, export markets purchase 19% of Brazil’s

beef from the Amazon, operating slaughterhouses in the

beef, shouldering 13-14% of deforestation risk.

Amazon states of Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Pará, and Acre.

The domestic market buys 81% of Brazil’s beef and is

The second largest exporter, Minerva, in 2017 handled

linked to 85-86% of cattle-related deforestation. This is

15.8% of exports and was associated with 15.5% of export-

chiefly because a disproportionately large share of beef

associated deforestation risk (10,200 ha).

raised in the Amazon, where per-tonne deforestation
risks are high, feeds into the domestic market. These

Marfrig, the third largest exporter, saw its export share

figures confirm that action is needed by multiple players

increase from 12% to 15% between 2015-2017 and was

– slaughterhouses, retailers, government, traders, and

associated with 10-15% of deforestation risk over that

consumer markets abroad – to tackle deforestation in the

period.

cattle sector.
Around two-thirds of Brazilian beef exports are handled
by these three companies – JBS, Minerva and Marfrig –

EXPORTING COMPANIES AND THEIR
DEFORESTATION COMMITMENTS

all of which have signed the G4 agreement, a
commitment to eliminate deforestation from their supply
chains in the Amazon biome. Despite this, Trase’s data

The Trase Brazilian beef data also maps the supply chains

suggest these companies’ exports were linked to 140,000

and quantifies deforestation risk for the 200 companies

ha of deforestation between 2015 and 2017.

exporting beef and live cattle from Brazil.
Although these companies have taken steps to monitor
The world’s largest meat-packing company, the Brazilian

their direct suppliers, and so in theory can avoid farms

firm JBS, is the biggest exporter of Brazilian beef, with

associated with deforestation, none so far monitors

29% of total export volumes in 2017. It accounted for

its indirect suppliers, who make up the bulk of their

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supply chain. Trase reveals the previously unquantified
risks associated with each company’s cattle exports by

A POWERFUL NEW TOOL TO ADDRESS
BEEF-RELATED DEFORESTATION

accounting for their indirect suppliers where possible
and by taking a landscape approach to measuring their

The new Trase data represent a major advance in our

deforestation risk (i.e. calculating deforestation risk at the

understanding of trade in one of the world´s major

municipal-level).

deforestation-risk agricultural commodities.
As the world’s appetite for beef grows, Trase can help

Trase data also suggest that 45–54% of these companies’

to identify the key companies and countries that can

deforestation risk comes from sourcing cattle outside of

drive improvements in the sustainability of these global

the Amazon, from the Cerrado where native vegetation

supply chains.

is also being converted to pasture. By only covering
the Amazon, the G4 agreement does not go far enough

For companies involved in the Brazilian beef trade, as

to eliminate deforestation and shield downstream

well as potential investors, Trase can be a powerful tool to

companies from deforestation risk.

identify hotspots of sustainability risk in company supply
chains, and regions where they should focus engagement in
pursuit of zero-deforestation targets.

PHOTO: DANIEL BELTRA / GREENPEACE

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Governments can use this information to track the
deforestation linked to the sourcing by their country. Some

HOW DOES TRASE WORK?
Like all Trase datasets, the Brazilian beef product

governments, like the seven signatories of the Amsterdam

analyses customs declarations alongside many other sources

Declarations – Germany, Denmark, Norway, France,

of complementary data. The exports mapped by Trase are

Netherlands, the UK, and Italy – for instance, have made
zero deforestation commitments and can use Trase data to
look for improvements in their supply chains.

based on customs declarations covering almost US$6 billion
worth of annual exports of beef, offal, and live cattle.
These data were linked back to specific slaughter facilities
by triangulating the information in the customs data
against data on companies’ assets, companies’ subsidiary

Civil society organisations and journalists can use the data
to promote more sustainable production, and to monitor

relationships, and official lists of slaughterhouse export
permissions.
Once the slaughterhouse was identified, the

progress on sustainability commitments of different

municipalities where the cattle originated were mapped

sectors, targeting the biggest culprits more effectively

using one of two methods: For 50.4% of exports, records of

and identifying progress.

cattle movements between properties were used; these data
include indirect suppliers – properties who don’t sell to the
slaughterhouse directly (they may, for example, sell calves to
another farm which raises them before slaughter).
For a further 49.2% of exports from slaughterhouses
where animal movement records were not available (mostly
related to slaughter in the states of São Paulo, Goiás, and
Rondônia), data on the origin of cattle slaughtered in each
state’s export-approved slaughterhouses were used instead.
These show the municipalities where the cattle originated
but don’t capture indirect suppliers.
The maps of the origin of each shipment were then
linked to deforestation data to calculate their “deforestation
risk”, the area of cattle-related deforestation (in
hectares) associated with their production, based on the
municipalities of origin and the proportion of production
exported per municipality.
Cattle-related deforestation was calculated for each
municipality by intersecting annual high-resolution maps
of pasture expansion and deforestation in the Amazon,
Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes with statistics on cattle
production per municipality. Deforestation was counted
as cattle-related if pasture was detected on the deforested
land within five years (excluding pasture that became soy
cropland within that period).
Trase data is open-access and freely available for
download at www.trase.earth/data.

The Trase Infobrief series illustrates some of the key insights around commodity trade and supply chain sustainability
that are made possible by Trase. Explore the data yourself at trase.earth

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