Sao Paulo, Brazil – Police detained 16 activists from the environmental group Greenpeace on Friday after launching a protest against Brazil’s largest soy exporter at an Amazon River port.
Agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. built a $20 million port three years ago at Santarem, located at the end of an unpaved road that leads through rain forest to soybean fields in the central-western state of Mato Grosso. Soy producers are lobbying the government to pave the road.
Environmentalists say paving would open up the heart of the rain forest to logging and ranchers.
The protesters draped a large banner reading “Cargill Out” over the grain loaders before being arrested.
“We managed to stop Cargill’s soy operations for three and a half hours, which was our objective,” Greenpeace campaigner Andre Muggiati said from Santarem, some 1,500 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. “Our objective was to interrupt the world soy business that is causing deforestation in Santarem.” Police said they were questioning the activists and had not decided whether to charge them.
Brazil’s rain forest is the size of Western Europe and covers 60 percent of the country. Experts say as much as 20 percent of its 1.6 million square miles has been destroyed.
