Big beef Cowboy 'heroes' at odds with changes in climate and culture

ellowstone in Montana may have the most romanticized cowboy culture in the world thanks to the TV drama series of the same name starring Kevin Costner. But the true home of the 21st-century cowboy is about 7,500 miles south, in what used to be the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, where the reality of raising cattle is better characterized by depression, market pressure and vexed efforts to prevent the destruction of the land and its people.

- Jonathan Watts Naira Hofmeister Daniel Camargos Pará, Brazil

The toll was apparent along the rutted PA 279 road in Pará state. Record drought has dried up irrigation ponds and burned pasture grass down to the roots, leaving emaciated cattle behind the fences.

This year, this state will host the Cop30 climate conference, which would be an ideal moment for Brazil to demonstrate progress on a new system to track livestock and reduce emissions from deforestation due to be completed by the end of 2026. But few ranchers believe this will happen because of the huge gulf between what locals want and what the world needs.

"What is our biggest disease today? Depression. That's what is killing the most [producers]," said Thaueny Stival, the owner of a mid-sized ranch in Pará. A thoughtful man who says he is trying to modernize and do the right thing, Stival said ranchers were struggling to cope with rapidly changing perceptions about food production.

When pioneers first arrived in this region in the 1980s, he says, they were encouraged to clear forest by Brazil's government (then a military dictatorship). Banks would not give them loans unless they had cleared most of their land.

But that partial and romanticized story of Amazon colonization from half a century ago has been overtaken by more recent and brutal changes. The first ranchers here were told they were heroes for opening up new economic frontiers, but the climate crisis has dealt a triple blow to their reputation and their livelihoods.

Not only has it become harder to feed and water their livestock, but they now face criticism for wrecking a biodiverse pillar of the global environment while also bearing the brunt of conflicting demands from multinational food corporations to provide food that is economically cheap and ecologically ethical. The result is that the ranchers who once considered themselves national heroes are treated as global pariahs.

Stival said the average rancher was suffering beyond endurance.