Avocados, soybeans, oil palm and sugar cane are monocultures that threaten forests, causing deforestation in different regions of the country, from Quintana Roo to Jalisco. Government subsidies and ignored environmental laws are some of the elements that contribute to the loss of these forests.
Mexico’s forests are cut down to plant avocados, soybeans, palm oil, sugar cane, among other monocultures. Each year, the producers turn around 47,770 hectares of forest cover into agricultural land. This is a change in land use that represents the second cause of deforestation in the country, after livestock, according to the National Forest Monitoring System (SNMF).
What are some of the monocultures that threaten Mexico’s forests? Here are four of them that affect very different territories, but that have in common that the progress of almost all of them was possible thanks to public subsidies to producers and lack of control by governments at all levels.
Monocultures that threaten forests
1. Avocado
In the state of Jalisco, in western Mexico, every 75 seconds a tree is illegally felled to make way for avocado plantations. At this rate, a year would amount to 401,500 trees cut down and 1,054 hectares (three times the size of Central Park, in New York), according to a study carried out by the entity’s own environmental agency.
The loss of forests in the state could be accelerated by what happened in July 2022: the US government authorized the sale of avocados harvested in Jalisco, where the cultivation of this fruit is accompanied by territorial control by groups that present themselves as part of cartels. drugs.
2. Oil palm
Palm oil, the most consumed vegetable oil in the world, causes deforestation in four states in Mexico. Between 2014 and 2019, at least 5,400 hectares of forests and jungles were lost due to oil palm expansion in the states of Chiapas, Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz, according to cartographic analyzes carried out by the study authors. Oil palm cultivation in Mexico.
Producers of this monoculture do not respect protected areas. At least 4,000 hectares of oil palm are found within the La Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve, a protected natural area located on the coast of Chiapas and where the greatest expansion of monoculture in the last ten years has taken place.
The advance of oil palm is due in part to government support. Between 2017 and 2018, during the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto, the federal Ministry of Agriculture gave 1,114 beneficiaries across the country incentives for the production of this native African plant for nearly 61 million pesos (more than $3 million ). , according to the response to a request for information.
3. Soy
Hopelchén is located in the state of Campeche, the municipality that produces the most soybeans in Mexico: in 2021, it was located, with 49,870 hectares, as the place with the highest production of this legume in the country.
This expansion occurred in areas that were already used for other types of crops, but also in lands that had forest cover. In 20 years, the municipality has lost at least 153,809 hectares of tree cover, an area that is three times the size of the island of Cozumel, one of the largest in the country.
A key government policy for promoting soy planting was productive reconversion in the Yucatán Peninsula. In 2009, the government of then President Felipe Calderón implemented a program to replace crops such as corn with oilseeds, including soybeans, since their production was not only considered more profitable, but also necessary to reduce high imports.
4. Sugar cane
Sugarcane has an unfortunate impact in the south of the country. In the entire municipality of Othón P. Blanco, in the state of Quintana Roo, since 2010, 75,364 hectares have lost their tree cover, which is equivalent to 109 times the area of the Chapultepec forest, located in Mexico City.
From the 1970s, the federal government promoted the cultivation of sugarcane in the region, partly with the National Deforestation Program (Pronade) that existed between 1972 and 1983 and promoted the deforestation of forests to transform them into pastures for cattle and in fields for mechanized agriculture.
In Quintana Roo, the sugar mill was installed, which until today impacts the forests and forests in the south of the state. So far, in 2022 alone, 36,000 hectares have been allocated to this crop in Othón P. Blanco, according to Evaristo Gómez Díaz, representative of the Local Union of Sugarcane Producers.
For more information on Thelma Gómez Durán’s report on the impact of monocultures in Mexico: here