Film and video · IPAM Amazônia
The soy supply chain in MATOPIBA: a documentary for IPAM
A documentary on soy expansion in Matopiba, with farmers, longtime residents and smallholders. It shows that more can be produced without clearing the Cerrado.
- Client
- IPAM Amazônia
- Year
- 2016 to 2018
- Territory
- Matopiba, the Cerrado's agricultural frontier, with filming in Tocantins and Piauí
- Format
- Documentary, 9 minutes
- Funding
- Collaboration for Forests and Agriculture (CFA), funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
The challenge
Matopiba, the agricultural frontier spanning Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, accounts for much of the growth of soy in Brazil, and also for the rapid deforestation of the Cerrado savanna. IPAM and the Collaboration for Forests and Agriculture wanted to bring a difficult message to companies in the soy supply chain: it is possible to produce more and better without clearing a single new area, and zero-deforestation commitments need to move from paper to practice.
The film
What we delivered
- 9-minute documentary, with English subtitles
- 45 edited photographs from the expedition
- Aerial footage and motion graphics
- Field script and raw footage for IPAM's archive
What we did
We joined IPAM's scientific expeditions to Tocantins and Piauí in 2016 and 2017 and recorded a mosaic of voices: farmers who arrived with the frontier, longtime residents who watched their stream run dry, smallholders without land title threatened by land grabbers, researchers and public officials. Image releases were collected on video, still in the field.
The script weaves these accounts together with data on deforestation, emissions, water and land conflicts, presented in motion graphics and aerial footage. The narration provides the thread: the Cerrado as the cradle of Brazil's waters, and the cost of unplanned occupation.
Beyond the film, we delivered 45 edited photographs from the expedition, the field script and all the raw footage for the institute's archive.
“This water is a creek I've never seen run dry. I was born and raised here and never saw it dry up. And this year it already has.”
Outcome
The film was released in November 2018, in Portuguese with English subtitles, and has over 4,000 views on Forest's YouTube channel. IPAM also received 45 edited photographs from the expedition and all the raw footage for its archive.
