Indigenous Lands Turned into Soy Farms Pose Threats to Sustainability in Brazil

Abstract

Urban areas are growing, often at the expense of native ecosystems. As a result, indigenous lands (ILs) have become critical refuges for biodiversity, essential for sustainability and sit at the intersection of cultural, economic, and environmental interests. ILs play a double role in this context: they protect native biodiversity but are often framed as barriers to economic growth. In Brazil, nearly 14% of the territory is demarcated as ILs. This has led to conflicts with Brazil’s agricultural sector, particularly in the southernmost states, where agribusiness drives the economy. We hypothesize that this conflict leads to agricultural encroachment of ILs, which might become extension of farms, compromising their sustainability. We analyzed two decades of public data on soy coverage within ILs in Brazil’s southernmost states (Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul) and found that soy cultivation in ILs increased by over 116% in the last two decades, peaking in 2019 at 177% above the 2001 baseline. We argue that ILs urgently need a framework that enables the communities therein to benefit from income originating from land lease, while ensuring that encroachment is limited and does not pose threats to native biodiversity. This can be challenging due to growing political pressure to weaken socioenvironmental protection and ILs’ demarcation but is nevertheless essential for the sustainable coexistence of urban areas, farms, and ILs.

1. Introduction

Indigenous lands (ILs) are essential entities to protect cultural heritage and biodiversity, acting as key buffers against deforestation and environmental degradation. In Brazil, ILs cover nearly 14% of the national territory (~1.188.121 km²) and are constitutionally guaranteed for the exclusive use and preservation of indigenous communities [1]. Most (98.25% of ILs total area) of the ILs in Brazil are in the Amazon region and have been the focus of intense scrutiny due to humanitarian crises—such as the Yanomami emergency, which exposed the devastating impacts of illegal mining and state neglect [2]. However, the remaining 1.75% of ILs’ total area elsewhere in the country also face—often quietly—threats to their existence and to sustainability more broadly. In particular, the ILs in Brazil’s southernmost states have received far less scrutiny (e.g., [3,4]). This is an important oversight, because these territories can be equally critical for the conservation of threatened biomes, including the Atlantic Forest, Pampa, and Cerrado, which are among the most fragmented and ecologically vulnerable regions in the country and the world [5,6]. ILs not only safeguard sociobiodiversity but also provide essential ecosystem services in landscapes dominated by urban development and intensive agriculture, and we need to understand how anthropogenic pressures are shaping their usage and sustainable futures [7].

Brazil is the world’s largest soybean exporter and a central player in the global soy supply chain, producing over one-third of global exports in recent years [8]. The national soybean area has more than doubled since 2000, expanding from 26.4 million hectares to over 55 million hectares by 2019, largely at the expense of natural vegetation in the Amazon, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pampa, and Pantanal biomes [9]. While the Amazon Soy Moratorium has slowed direct forest-to-soy conversion in parts of the Amazon, expansion continues through indirect land use change and in biomes with weaker protections [10,11,12]. Moreover, other biomes have not benefited from the Amazon Soy Moratorium, especially areas with highly fragmented biomes. This includes the southernmost states of Brazil, which are home to the Atlantic Forest (including Araucaria Forests), Cerrado, and Pampa. Soy is primarily destined for animal feed, with smaller shares for vegetable oil and human consumption [13]. Its cultivation is closely tied to infrastructure expansion, land speculation, and biodiversity loss, with measurable impacts on species richness and ecosystem services, even where forest loss is minimal [14].

ILs in the southernmost states of Brazil—Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul—are intertwined with a complex network of competing interests that can shape ILs’ sustainable futures. This is because these states are hubs of agribusiness. Together, these three states produced nearly 25% of the total value (in BRL) of Brazil’s soybean production and 49% of poultry production in 2023, highlighting their exceptional role in economic growth and commodity production [8]. In each of these states, small-scale farms dominate the soybean landscape: approximately 79% of soy-producing establishments in Paraná, 81% in Rio Grande do Sul, and 87% in Santa Catarina operate on less than 50 hectares [15]. The region also leads in the production of other commodities such as rice, tobacco, and wheat, which supports robust agro-industrial supply chains. These economic strengths make southern Brazil one of the most advanced and intensively farmed regions in the country [8,15].

There is a clear political tension regarding the permanence and expansion of ILs in Brazil and, in particular, the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul [16]. Currently, land demarcation and identification processes for ILs are frozen due to a legal deadlock that remains unresolved in the Supreme Court. In territories located near regions dominated by agribusiness, Indigenous communities often depend on public assistance policies, as their lands are surrounded by private properties, making traditional and sustainable practices such as hunting and fishing unfeasible [17]. Therefore, internal conflicts have emerged within some communities (such as in Serrinha and Ivaí in 2024), as well as disputes with landowners living near ILs, exemplified by the ongoing dispute between Guarani indigenous communities and non-indigenous populations in the municipalities of Guaíra and Terra Roxa in Paraná [18]. Although the conflict between indigenous peoples and the national society in western Paraná is longstanding and marked by episodes of violence, the current context of land exploitation and agrarian disputes has led to unprecedented acts of brutality in the region, including two recent accounts of decapitation of indigenous people in the region (see [19]).

In this scenario, there is growing pressures on ILs to give away space for agricultural activities, which threatens national sustainable development. On 28 May 2024, Brazil’s Senate approved a controversial bill by Senator Esperidião Amin from Santa Catarina state [20], which aims to halt the demarcation of indigenous lands in Santa Catarina. If passed, this bill will weaken Brazil’s legal framework for IL recognition, opening the door for agribusiness expansion and anti-indigenous lobbying. Adding to this political climate, the recently approved PL2159/2021 (aka ‘PL da Devastação’ or PL of devastation) [21] overhauls the environmental licensing process, making it easier for large-scale projects to bypass stringent environmental assessments. Such deregulation risks accelerating deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the marginalization of indigenous communities—further augmenting the role of ILs as wildlife sanctuaries and the cornerstone for lasting cultural heritage. A key question remains: how are ILs in Brazil’s southernmost states interacting with the agricultural industry, and what are consequences of these interactions for the health and sustainability of ILs?

In this study, we analyzed over two decades (from 2001 to 2022) of data from the Global Forest Watch to analyze land use changes, with particular attention to the expansion of soy cultivation within IL boundaries. We were particularly interested in understanding if—and to what extent—ILs were being used for soy cultivation. Our hypothesis was that agribusiness expansion would lead to encroachment of IL areas, converting parts of ILs into soy plantations. We expected this encroachment to have increased over the years due to the growing contribution of the agribusiness to Brazil’s GDP and socioeconomic wealth. Our findings highlight the constant struggle between sociobiodiversity and economic development in Brazil’s south and report the vulnerabilities of ILs to surrounding agricultural pressures. We emphasize that ILs are indispensable not only for local sociobiodiversity but also for broader sustainability strategies in Brazil, and national policies that integrate IL needs with sustainable agricultural development is urgently needed to safeguard sustainable development in the country.

2. Methods

2.1. Indigenous Land and Soy Plantation Data

We focused our analysis on Brazil’s three southernmost states: Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul (Figure 1). Polygons of ILs are publicly available from the Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas (FUNAI), which define the official boundaries of demarcated indigenous territories. To quantify land use changes and the expansion of soy cultivation within these ILs, we extracted data from the Global ForestWatch platform (https://data.globalforestwatch.org/datasets/soy-planted-area-/about, accessed on 24 April 2025) [22], covering the period from 2001 to 2022. This dataset provides annual estimates of soy plantation areas at a fine spatial resolution, allowing us to track temporal and spatial dynamics across more than two decades. The link to access the specific data used here is provided in Table S1. State boundaries were extracted from the official IBGE state shapefile.

2.2. Study Areas

We compiled boundaries of 79 indigenous lands (ILs) across the three southern Brazilian states: 24 in Paraná, 25 in Santa Catarina, and 30 in Rio Grande do Sul. IL sizes varied widely, ranging from very small parcels of 5 ha to large territories of 37,078 ha, with a mean area of approximately 4222 ha. The principal ethnic groups represented were the Kaingang (28 ILs), Guaraní (17 ILs), and Guarani Mbya (15 ILs), with additional ILs occupied by Guarani Nhandeva, Xokléng, and mixed communities (e.g., Kaingang–Guaraní). The ILs in southern Brazil are distributed across two major biomes. Most territories in Paraná and Santa Catarina and part of those in northern Rio Grande do Sul occur within the Atlantic Forest biome, particularly in the highland Araucaria mixed forest subregion. By contrast, ILs in the southern and western portions of Rio Grande do Sul are located in the Pampa biome, characterized by natural grasslands interspersed with wetlands and gallery forests.

Table 1. Characteristics of indigenous lands (ILs) in southern Brazil, including state, name, resident ethnic group(s), and total area.

State	Indigenous Land	Ethnicity	Total Area (ha)
PR	Apucarana	Kaingang	5602
	Avá-Guarani do Ocoí	Guarani Kaiowá	253
	Barão de Antonina	Kaingang	3769
	Boa Vista–PR	Kaingang	5991
	Cerco Grande	Guaraní	1394
	Faxinal	Kaingang	2020
	Herarekã Xetá	Xetá	2684
	Ilha da Cotinga	Guaraní	1696
	Ivai	Kaingang	7327
	Laranjinha	Guaraní, Kaingang	291
	Mangueirinha	Guaraní, Kaingang	17245
	Marrecas	Kaingang	16918
	Pinhalzinho	Guaraní	594
	Queimadas	Kaingang	3021
	Rio Areia	Guaraní	1365
	Rio das Cobras	Guaraní, Kaingang	19038
	Sambaqui	Guaraní	2803
	São Jeronimo	Xetá,Guaraní, Kaingang	1348
	Tekoha Guasú Guavirá	Guarani Nhandeva	23872
	Tekoha Itamarã	Guarani Nhandeva, Guarani Mbya	216
	Tekohá Añetete	Guaraní	1750
	Tibagy/Mococa	Kaingang	829
	Vera Tupã’i	Guaraní	5
	Yvyporã Laranjinha	Guarani Nhandeva	1245
SC	Aldeia Kondá	Kaingang	2252
	Amaral/Tekoá Kuriy	Guarani Mbya	503
	Barragem Norte	Xokléng	862
	Cachoeira dos Inácios	Guarani Mbya	83
	Canelinha	Guarani Mbya	196
	Guarani de Araçai	Guaraní	2799
	Ibirama	Xokléng, Guaraní, Kaingang	14069
	Ibirama-La Klãnô	Xokléng, Guaraní, Kaingang	37078
	Mbiguaçu	Guarani Nhandeva, Guarani Mbya	59
	Morro Alto	Guarani Mbya	896
	Morro da Palha	Guarani Mbya	217
	Morro dos Cavalos	Guaraní	1988
	Palmas	Kaingang	3691
	Pindoty	Guarani Mbya	3282
	Pinhal	Kaingang	881
	Pirai	Guarani Mbya	3019
	Rio dos Pardos	Xokléng	732
	Tarumã	Guarani Mbya	2169
	Toldo Chimbangue	Kaingang	981
	Toldo Chimbangue II	Kaingang	963
	Toldo Imbu	Kaingang	1962
	Toldo Pinhal	Kaingang	4836
	Xapecó	Guaraní, Kaingang	15556
	Xapecó (Pinhalzinho-Canhadão)	Guaraní, Kaingang	630
	Águas Claras	Guarani Mbya	139
RS	Cacique Doble	Guaraní, Kaingang	4402
	Campo Bonito	Guarani Mbya	94
	Cantagalo	Guarani Mbya	284
	Capivari	Guarani Mbya	43
	Carreteiro	Kaingang	601
	Estrada do Mar	Guarani Mbya	45
	Guarani Barra do Ouro	Guaraní	2302
	Guarani Votouro	Guaraní	749
	Guarani de Águas Brancas	Guaraní	219
	Guarita	Guaraní, Kaingang	23410
	Inhacorá	Kaingang	2833
	Irapuá	Guaraní	224
	Kaingang de Iraí	Kaingang	280
	Ligeiro	Kaingang	4614
	Mato Castelhano	Kaingang	3571
	Mato Preto	Guaraní	4234
	Monte Caseros	Kaingang	1100
	Nonoai	Guaraní, Kaingang	19859
	Nonoai/Rio da Várzea	Kaingang	16245
	Pacheca	Guaraní	1839
	Passo Grande do Rio Forquilha	Kaingang	1919
	Rio dos Índios	Kaingang	710
	Riozinho–RS	Guarani Mbya	25
	Salto Grande do Jacuí	Guaraní	235
	Serrinha	Kaingang	11721
	Tekoá Guavirá	Guaraní	28
	Varzinha	Guarani Mbya	778
	Ventarra	Kaingang	752
	Votouro	Kaingang	3328
	Votouro/Kandóia	Kaingang	5998

summarizes the detailed information about each IL in relation to its name, ethnicity(ies) and area (ha).

2.3. Data Analysis

All spatial analyses were conducted in R v.4.5.0 (R Core Team, 2025) [23] using the ‘terra’ package v 1.8-54 and the ‘sf’ package v 1.0-21 [24,25], which enables efficient manipulation of large raster and vector datasets. To quantify soy expansion within indigenous lands (ILs) in southern Brazil, we combined annual maps of the soy planted area with official IL boundary datasets. Annual soy rasters (2001–2022) were obtained as tiled GeoTIFFs in geographic coordinates (WGS84, EPSG:4326). For each year, individual tiles were mosaicked and cropped to the extent of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul states and then masked to the state boundaries. IL polygons were made topologically valid (sf::st_make_valid), merged, and simplified for plotting using rmapshaper v 0.50 [26]. All vector data (states, ILs) and annual soy rasters were reprojected to South America Albers Equal Area Conic (EPSG:5880). Pixel areas (in hectares) were derived from the raster resolution, and soy cover within each polygon was quantified using the exactextractr package v 0.10.0 [27]. Specifically, we summed the soy values multiplied by the fractional pixel overlap with each polygon to obtain the soy planted area (ha) and divided this by the polygon’s total area (derived with st_area) to calculate the percentage of each IL planted with soy. Data visualization and descriptive statistical analyses were conducted using the ‘ggplot2’ package v3.5.2 [28].

3. Results

3.1. Soy Cultivation Has Intensified Across ILs over the Last Two Decades

We found that soy cultivation in ILs has expanded markedly over the past two decades. In 2001 (baseline), the average soy coverage across ILs was approximately 4.3%, but by 2022 it had nearly tripled, reaching 11.9%, an increase of ~177% (Figure 2). In 2023, the soy coverage decreased slightly to 9.3%, representing an increase of ~116% from the baseline. The increase appears to be non-linear, with a steady upward trend in recent years. The last decade (2012–2022) of monitoring data appears to show a more pronounced rise in the average soy coverage compared to the 2001–2010 period. Public policies and leadership attitude towards ILs and agribusiness certainly contributed to this trend.

3.2. Some ILs Have Most of Their Land Coverage in Soy

Our data revealed that some ILs are more vulnerable to encroachment than others. While some ILs experienced minimal or no soy cultivation during the monitoring period, others had over 60% of their territory converted to soy, with the highest recorded value peaking at 68.3% in 2016. This shows that nearly three-quarters of the IL was covered with soy. Overall, our results suggest that southern ILs are increasingly vulnerable to agricultural encroachment, highlighting a tension between traditional land use and the surrounding agribusiness economy.

3.3. Soy Expansion Has Been Uneven but Consistent Across States

We found marked geographic differences in the extent and trajectory of soy cultivation within ILs by state. In Paraná, soy cultivation within ILs remained relatively stable from 2001 to the mid-2010s but has increased since 2017, doubling from 3.7% in 2001 to 8.4% in 2022, an overall increase of ~127% from the baseline (Figure 3). In Santa Catarina, soy cultivation within ILs has consistently remained the lowest among the three states, rising from 2.8% in 2001 to 6.2% in 2022, which is still a ~121% increase (Figure 3). By contrast, ILs in Rio Grande do Sul have experienced the strongest and most sustained expansion, with the mean soy coverage increasing from 6.2% in 2001 to 12.8% in 2022, a ~106% increase, and with some ILs exceeding 60% of their territory planted with soy (Figure 3). Maps for 2007, 2017, and 2022 are shown to illustrate how soy has progressively encroached into ILs across the three states, with expansion concentrated in the northern and western regions of Paraná, the western region of Santa Catarina, and across large areas of central (north through south) Rio Grande do Sul (Figure 3). Together, these results demonstrate that ILs in southern Brazil are not equally exposed to soy expansion, with the pressure being most intense in Rio Grande do Sul. Nevertheless, all three states doubled the soy encroachment in ILs in 2022 compared with 2001.

4. Discussion

Our findings reveal an alarming trajectory of agricultural encroachment within indigenous lands (ILs) in Brazil’s southernmost states. The increase in soy cultivation by over 116% since 2001 reflects not only the growing economic pressures from agribusiness but also the vulnerability of ILs in regions, where biomes like the Atlantic Forest, Pampa, and Cerrado are already under intense anthropogenic stress (e.g., [5,29]). This expansion aligns with broader national patterns of soybean-driven land use change, which disproportionately affects biodiversity hotspots such as the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado [9,12]. In these biomes, soy cultivation is among the top drivers of habitat loss, with measurable impacts on multiple taxa including plants, birds, and amphibians, at both regional and global scales [9,11,12,30].

The impacts of soy expansion are not necessarily unidimensional and uniform. Recent work on biodiversity-specific footprinting shows that forest loss is not always a good proxy for sociobiodiversity decline across landscapes [14]. This is relevant for ILs that are more well integrated into urban landscapes, where agricultural encroachment may degrade the land and forest mosaics without necessarily triggering large-scale deforestation metrics. Additionally, the sociobiodiversity impacts of soy cultivation expansion are often compounded by indirect effects, such as infrastructure development and land speculation—both of which accelerate secondary deforestation and habitat fragmentation [10,13]—and direct ethnic conflicts [31].

Our data highlight that southern ILs are at increasing risk and urgently require targeted policy interventions. The expansion of commodity crops—particularly soy—within ILs will continue to compromise sociobiodiversity, disrupt cultural practices, and undermine the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples. These concerns are supported by findings from recent analyses showing that, while the economic benefits of soybean production are often localized, the environmental costs, especially sociobiodiversity loss, are spatially widespread, affecting both focal and adjacent areas [32].

Recent political activities have added further uncertainty to ILs and sociobiodiversity conservation in Brazil (see Introduction). Proposals such as the bill from Senator Esperidião Amin [20] and the recent uproar against environmental conservation—such as the PL 2159/2021 (PL of Devastation, [21]), which was vetoed by the President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva with amendments—threaten sustainability in two ways: first, by halting IL demarcation in Santa Catarina, and second, by dismantling policy frameworks designed to safeguard indigenous rights and ecological health. These developments resemble broader governance failures to enforce zero-deforestation commitments in commodity supply chains [14] and risk intensifying the policy–agribusiness alignment that prioritizes short-term revenue over long-term socioenvironmental resilience.

It is in our view futile to try and fully reverse the impacts of encroachment, as this has multidimensional and complex socioeconomic interactions that, at times, can benefit indigenous people and overcome shortcomings from the State. However, we must mitigate these challenges. To achieve this, we argue Brazil need structured frameworks that enable indigenous communities to regain control of agricultural practices and the wealth they generate within their lands. This includes moving away from illegal leasing arrangements that benefit external actors and instead, adopting regulated indigenous-led agricultural models. Similar to recommendations by Boerema et al. (2016) [13] and Lucas et al. (2021) [12], such models should integrate sustainable cropping practices (e.g., crop rotation, reduced agrochemical use) with cooperative organization, technical assistance, and access to credit other than from agribusiness. Moreover, policies should account for biodiversity-intactness metrics [33] rather than relying solely on deforestation rates as performance indicators, thereby ensuring that agricultural development aligns with both cultural values and environmental thresholds.

Finally, the future of ILs in Brazil’s southern states will depend on integrating indigenous rights with sustainable development strategies that respond to the realities of a rapidly expanding agricultural sector. Holistic monitoring approaches—combining remote sensing, biodiversity risk assessment, and socioeconomic evaluation—are essential to avoid repeating the pattern seen elsewhere in Brazil, where soybean expansion has often preceded irreversible ecological degradation [9,34]. Our results underline the urgency of designing economic alternatives that reconcile cultural heritage and biodiversity conservation with the demands of agribusiness-driven landscapes. In the absence of these actions, we foresee an escalation of ongoing conflicts, which threaten sociobiodiversity and agricultural growth, compromising both ecological integrity and the sustainable futures of indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

5. Conclusions

In conclusion, our study highlights the rapid expansion of soy cultivation within ILs in Brazil’s southernmost states, stressing the growing tension between agribusiness and sociobiodiversity. By quantifying over two decades of land use change, we demonstrate that ILs—although constitutionally protected—are increasingly vulnerable to economic pressures and political decisions that favor agricultural expansion. We argue that a solution to this challenge will require policies that regulate IL use and empower indigenous communities to liaise with agribusiness for sustainable ways to produce commodities within ILs without threatening ILs’ role of safeguarding cultural heritage and sociobiodiversity. This is crucial because ILs have multiple roles including safeguarding sociobiodiversity (e.g., [7,35]). Our proposed solution could be used in other regions of Brazil that also face similar conflicts (e.g., Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul states) [36], as well as serve as a model for conflicts within ILs globally (e.g., [37,38,39].