How the world’s taste for soya is eating Brazil’s Amazon

Cultivation of the crop has made a few wealthy but at a huge cost to untouched forest as it spreads across vast areas of former wilderness

Photographs by Avener Prado

In 2012, José Pereira do Nascimento lost his home when the Santo Antônio hydroelectric station in Porto Velho, in Brazil’s north-west Amazon basin, opened its floodgates. The 3,568MW plant, built to provide power for 45 million people, released a muddy torrent that flooded his neighbourhood, forcing 120 families to evacuate.

“The river has gone out of control. We used to know when it would flood and when it would dry up. Now nobody knows any more,” says Nascimento, a rancher. “What men call progress has killed our history.”