Brazil Pays Farmers to Protect Forests They Can Legally Cut

Carlos Roberto Simonetti calls it his "fourth harvest" — regular payments for protecting the forests on his Brazilian farm, even though he's legally allowed to cut them down for crops.

Simonetti is part of CONSERV, a pilot program that's proving you can pay farmers to protect nature and everyone wins. The Amazon Environmental Research Institute started the project in 2020 with a simple but powerful idea: give landowners financial reasons to keep their forests standing.

The results speak for themselves. Over four years, CONSERV protected more than 74,000 acres of forest and savanna across 23 properties in three Brazilian states. These aren't illegally protected areas — they're forests that farmers could legally clear tomorrow if they wanted to.

Here's why that matters. Brazil's Forest Code requires landowners to protect a minimum percentage of their property, but anything beyond that minimum can be legally cleared. In the Amazon and Cerrado regions, that adds up to a staggering area larger than the entire state of Florida — all at risk of being legally converted to farmland.

Simonetti farms 42,000 acres of corn, soy, and cotton in Mato Grosso, where the Cerrado savanna meets the Amazon rainforest. Through CONSERV, he receives between $50 and $79 per acre twice a year for protecting an additional 9,884 acres of native vegetation. He uses that income to improve his productive farmland.

The program carefully vets participants to ensure they're following all environmental laws and have fire management plans in place. Every three months, satellites monitor the protected areas to confirm no trees are being cleared.

Why This Inspires

What started as a donation-funded pilot is now evolving into a sustainable model that could protect millions of acres. The program is exploring ways to fund payments through carbon credits, premium pricing for sustainable commodities, and cheaper credit for participating farmers.

The timing couldn't be better. Nearly 70% of deforestation alerts in Brazil happen on private land, and research shows that 14% of all deforestation between 2008 and 2024 was technically legal. That's 8.9 million acres cleared with permits — an area larger than Belgium.

IPAM director André Guimarães saw this coming back in 2016 when his team calculated that 3.7 million acres in Mato Grosso alone were at risk of legal clearing. "We thought, if we don't do anything, those one-and-a-half million hectares will be deforested," he said.

Now that "do something" approach is expanding, with agribusiness companies already funding additional contracts to protect another 17,300 acres. The model shows that conservation and agriculture don't have to be enemies — they can be partners.

For farmers like Simonetti, protecting forests isn't just good for the planet; it's good business that helps secure water resources, regulate climate, and preserve the biodiversity that keeps his productive land thriving.