Film and video · IPAM Amazônia
Intensive ranching: a new production paradigm in the Amazon, for IPAM
A documentary showing how intensive cattle ranching increases ranchers' production and income in the Amazon without clearing new areas of forest.
Film still · Forest Criações
- Client
- IPAM Amazônia
- Year
- 2013 to 2017
- Territory
- Acre
- Format
- Documentary, about 7 minutes
The challenge
For decades, extensive cattle ranching was the rule in the Amazon: few animals on huge areas and, whenever productivity fell, more forest cut down. With the Forest Code requiring 80% of properties in the biome to be kept as legal reserve, IPAM needed to show producers that there is another path: producing more on land that has already been cleared.
The film
What we delivered
- Documentary with narration and testimonials
- Graphics with IPAM data
- Versions subtitled in English and Spanish
What we did
We built the film around people who had already made the change. Seu Zé, a small dairy farmer in Acre, tells how he doubled production per cow with support from a technician from the state Department of Agriculture. A larger rancher shows that high productivity holds up year after year without new clearing.
The narration and graphics translate IPAM's data: paddocks and pasture rotation, a drop of about 20% in cost per arroba (15 kg of beef), productivity gains of up to 200% and emissions per kilo of meat 48% lower. The film ends with what producers need to take the step: technical assistance, credit and legal certainty.
The documentary got English and Spanish versions, and IPAM itself later cited it as a reference for the tone of later projects with Forest.
