Bolsonaro lies and says that rejection of the “Marco Temporal” will end agribusiness in Brazil

President Jair Bolsonaro took advantage of the trial of the “Marco Temporal” suit in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) that may validate the agribusiness “thesis” of the “temporal landmark”, which could halt or allow the demarcation of new indigenous lands, to spread panic and disinformation.

In an interview to Rádio Jornal de Pernambuco, Bolsonaro said that if the STF decides in favor of the indigenous people’s original right to land, overturning the thesis that they would only have the right to the areas they occupied in 1988, agribusiness will no longer have anywhere to produce and will cease to exist. “We simply will not have agriculture in Brazil anymore. Brazil will be doomed. I don’t know how we will live, perhaps importing food. Now, paying with what money? I don’t know either,” said the president.

But the data shows otherwise. According to Sonia Guajajara and Eloy Terena, coordinators of the Indigenous Peoples Network of Brazil (Articulação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil), private land currently covers 41 percent of the country, while indigenous lands occupy just 13.8 percent. Pointing to the central role of demarcations for socio-environmental conservation, the leaders claim that degraded private territories could be recovered. “Around 22% of the national territory is occupied by pasture - but half of it with some degree of degradation- and 8% by agriculture, according to the MapBiomas project. In other words, part of the land could be prioritized for recovery, further reducing the demand for new occupations,” they explain in an article.