Most of Brazillian beef came from natural grassland area, "Serrado"

Also Pantanal (a kind of swampland of sorts) create some awesome natural pastures, although raising cattle there is harder because of the floods.

Amazon Rainforest destruction has much to do with stupidity (the land there is sand actually, destroying the forest to plant ANYTHING there, even soybeans, is stupid idea), logging, illegal land grabbing, and issues related to certain US companies (Cargill in particular is a big offender).

Also there a lot of conflict is going on there, including political, that made the destruction faster, including destruction being sped up in name of conservation, for example worldwide media was all happy when a particular logger got arrested, only for the destruction to speed up after his arrest, because the people that kept calling the police on him were actually trying to use the police to push him out so they could squat the land, and indeed they did so, as soon he was kicked out, illegal loggers and miners moved in, and fortified, now THOSE people can't be kicked out because they are heavily armed and the police fears the political fallout of that. Meanwhile the area they squatted had logging sped-up a lot, and trees that previously were being preserved as seed stock got cut down, ruining the management work being done there.

According to this paper 70-80% of Brazil's deforestation begins as pasture creation:

http://www7.nau.edu/mpcer/direnet/publications/publications_...

It can both be true that deforestation isn't important to Brazils meat industry but that people mostly burn down forests to create meat. Just means that we could stop the deforestation without much consequences, which is a good thing.

You are correct. Most of the deforestation issue could be fixed with better law enforcement, mind you not just "harsher" enforcement, part of the problem is some previous governments went overboard with it, bothering people that weren't doing anything illegal. Sadly the current government fixed it by doing the opposite (enforcing too little).

Excellent comment.

Except it's not true - all sources say that the primary reason for deforestation in brazil is cattle grazing. Wikipedia [0] has numerous sources that say the exact opposite of what OP has said.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra...

No- large swathes of land are being cleared because it's one of the few resources available to locals to climb out of poverty.

If they weren't cutting it down for beef, they'd be cutting it down for something else, like the palm oil mentioned.

Really moving the goalposts there

If it wasn't as economical to do it because you couldn't sell the meat produced that way, less of it would be cut down because they couldn't make money that way. In other words, it's their only resource, but it's only valuable to destroy if there is something they can sell, i.e., meat. (Or palm oil)

No- this isn't US economics where there's a cost below which land use doesn't make sense for them.

These people were cutting and burning these forests just for timber and firewood, and have been for decades.

Even in places where it's banned to do so, and they risk jail.

A smaller profit margin isn't going to prevent them from utilizing the one resource at their disposal.

That’s kind of a wacky argument. It’s like saying that they wouldn’t need money if only these people wouldn’t eat.

The fake meat story is a fraud - if you care about pollution, like every other industry yu can regulate how they handle waste products and other operational practices.

Fake meat is just a consolidation play, which happens to be the factor that made meat production a horror show in the first place. Instead of cutting down rain forests for pasture, we’ll cut them down for more protein sources to manufacture fake meat. Ditto with palm oil, which will drive some apes to extinction because there is a marketing problem with selling lard and a health problem associated with selling hydrogenated oils.

Always come with citations.