This is the second story in an ongoing collaboration with The Intercept Brasil. The story is also available in Portuguese on their site. You can read the first story here.
Nilfo and Hilária Wandscheer are small farmers from Santa Catarina who have settled in Lucas do Rio Verde, Mato Grosso, Brazil. On a farm the size of two soccer fields, they produce foods such as cassava, sweet potatoes, bananas, papayas, and lettuce. They also raise free-range chickens for meat and eggs.
Yet, even though they have all this at home, they still need to go to the supermarket to buy fruit and vegetables. The couple's farm is like an island amidst the monoculture of grains in Lucas, the birthplace of corn ethanol production in the country and one of the 20 richest cities in national agribusiness.
One of the main selling points of Brazilian agriculture is its ability to put food on the table. This is how Brazilian Big Ag sells itself and how it has contested the narrative on energy transition, positioning itself as the solution. At COP30, this was the argument used to fight for a climate funding share for ag.
But one need only set foot on the land dominated by agribusiness—as Intercept Brasil and Drilled did in Lucas do Rio Verde—to see that the reality is quite different. Lucas is sold as a model of progress and a hub of sustainable agriculture. However, even with so much production, it cannot feed its residents. There, garlic comes from China, apples from Argentina, and lettuce from São Paulo.
Lucas is an example of how agribusiness, using sustainability as its agenda, can be snatching billions from the search for real solutions to the collapse of the planet and still fail to feed countries like Brazil.
The city is sold as a land of opportunity by the local administration. ‘Here, job creation and quality of life come together,’ announces a 2025 promotional video from the city hall, with images of blue-and-yellow macaws, forests in the sunset, smiling children, and large cotton, soybean, and corn fields.
The land of opportunity: Lucas do Rio Verde. Photo by Felipe Sabrina/Intercept Brasil
Hilária Wandscheer and her garden. Photo by Felipe Sabrina / Intercept Brasil
The official propaganda, however, ignores what small rural farmers say. According to them, it is precisely this opulence of grains that has caused food shortages.
In the case of Nilfo and Hilária, there has been a water shortage in the community wells that supply their farms and neighbouring ones, in an area of 150 hectares. To irrigate their crops, the couple resorts to a well they built for their own use. On a commute to the market in August this year, they even bought lemons, because the tree from which they used to harvest the fruit died. ‘The avocado is flowering now, but [the avocado tree] is not holding the fruit,’ said Hilária.
The couple's declining and lost production experience is shared by other family farmers in the region, who blame the losses on the advance of monoculture and urbanisation on their properties and crops.
‘More than 80% of fruit and vegetables come from outside. Soybeans have entered and advanced into the settlements. Family farming is declining and ageing,’ complains Nilfo.
Next to Nilfo and Hilária's farm, a unit of Cantu Alimentos, a fruit and vegetable distribution centre from Paraná, was installed earlier this year. With one unit in Lucas do Rio Verde and another in the capital Cuiabá, the company identified the need to supply the internal demand for food that is not produced – or at least not in sufficient quantities – in cities dominated by agricultural commodities.
In Lucas do Rio Verde, 60 tonnes of fruit and vegetables from other states and even other countries are sold monthly to supermarkets and other establishments by Cantu, according to an employee there who agreed to speak with us. Oranges, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, passion fruit and other varieties are among the items sold.
One of the challenges facing the company is the high temperatures in the city, which compromises the shelf life of foods that are more sensitive to heat. ‘Cabbage, for example, if you don't bring it in half sold, you'll have to lower the price,’ the employee explained.
A giant chicken presides over a roundabout in Lucas, one of several ag-themed statues in the town. Photo by Felipe Sabrina / Intercept Brasil.
Made for agriculture
In Lucas do Rio Verde, the immense grain fields are right next to people's homes, offices, and commercial establishments. The wide avenues, where trucks over 20 metres long loaded with soybeans or corn travel easily, are lined with silos, agricultural machinery stores, supply stores, credit banks and real estate agencies. Bike paths take people from home straight to work in agribusinesses.
The city is home to transnational food companies such as MBRF, Amaggi and Bunge, as well as FS Bioenergia, a pioneer in producing 100% corn ethanol in Brazil. With American and Brazilian capital, the company began operations in Lucas in 2017 with its first plant. Then came the plants in Sorriso and Primavera do Leste. FS plans two more plants, also in Mato Grosso – one in Campo Novo do Parecis and another in Querência.
According to data from the city hall, Lucas do Rio Verde produces more than 600 million litres of corn ethanol per year, which represents about 8% of the 7.55 billion litres produced in the country in 2024. Lucas accounts for 1% of all national grain production. It is the fifth largest soybean producer in the state and one of the largest producers of second-crop corn—the corn planted in the same place where the soybeans were harvested—in the country.
So much space for grains leaves small food producers isolated amid monocultures. And a glance at the city map is enough to see that the remaining green areas there have also been mostly surrounded by mega-crops. The Rio Verde, which cuts through the city and gives it its name, is protected by narrow strips of vegetation that still persist. In some sections, the grain crop is less than 50 metres from the watercourse.
None of this is by chance. Lucas do Rio Verde was designed to serve agriculture and its owners. It all began in 1938, when dictator Getúlio Vargas implemented the March to the West project, a plan to occupy the lands of the Brazilian Midwest and North.
‘Conquering the land, dominating the water, subjugating the forest were our tasks. And in this struggle, which has been going on for centuries, we are achieving victory after victory,’ said Vargas, in a speech on 10 October 1940, during a visit to Manaus, the capital of Amazonas.
His strategy was to build roads and establish agricultural colonies in these places to increase state control in the region. The Amazon and the Cerrado of Mato Grosso began to be more devastated, and the Indigenous peoples who lived in the region were killed or expelled. This paved the way for agribusiness in Mato Grosso and the context in which Lucas do Rio Verde was born.
In the 1970s, this opening intensified during the civil-military government of dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici, with the start of BR-163 road construction. It was part of the National Integration Programme (PIN), which replicated many of Vargas' ideas. With more than 3,200 km connecting Tenente Portela, in Rio Grande do Sul, to Santarém, in Pará, the highway organizes agriculture around its axis.
With the opening of the BR-163, the first squatters arrived in the region, although the formal creation of Lucas do Rio Verde only took place in 1981, at the hands of the National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (Incra).
Lucas was created as a settlement on a 270,000-hectare plot of land. Between 180 and 200 families of landless farmers who lived on the margins of a road junction in Ronda Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, were settled there. Known as Encruzilhada Natalino, the camp of canvas and wooden shacks brought together more than 3,000 people fighting for land to live and produce.
The military's strategy was to try to dismantle the camp and prevent the struggle from escalating. ‘These sheltered people were offered the option of gaining land elsewhere in the country. The condition was that they leave the camp,’ explains Sandro Lima dos Santos, professor at the Federal Institute of Mato Grosso, IFMT.
After this first settlement, in a second phase of the occupation in Lucas do Rio Verde, the military began to use nationalist rhetoric to encourage the migration of small and medium-sized farmers from the south, mainly from Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, with the support of private colonisation companies or colonising cooperatives.
They supplied the infrastructure needed for housing and production and organised the documentation and sale of land to the colonisers. At least four waves of people from the south and southeast arrived to colonise Mato Grosso over the decades, with different economic profiles. Many of these people stayed and built the agricultural empires that reign there today.
Nowadays, Lucas do Rio Verde has an estimated population of 95,000, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Its Human Development Index (HDI), which ranges from 0.000 to 1.000, is among the highest in the country – 0.768. For comparison, the highest HDI in Brazil is 0.862, in São Caetano do Sul, São Paulo. According to data from the IBGE and the city hall, Lucas is the city with the second highest population growth rate in the Midwest and the second highest in Brazil among cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
The effect of this growth is already being felt by Nilfo and Hilária Wandscheer. The city and monoculture farms have advanced so much on their farm since they settled there in 2007 that today the urban grid is less than 300 metres from their property, and several monoculture farms are across the street, 30 metres away.
At the back of his farm, Nilfo points to the construction of a housing complex with two thousand houses, a project being carried out with funds from the federal, state and municipal governments. With a map of the settlement in hand, he shows the new road that will be built as part of the housing complex. The structure passes through his farm, over his crops.
The desolate fields of Lucas. Photo by Felipe Sabrina / Intercept Brasil
Life in the desert
The consequences of agricultural expansion are felt in everyday life in Lucas do Rio Verde. Walking in the city is a challenge because of the long avenues, the heat, and the lack of trees to provide shade. As there is no vegetation to balance the temperatures, at the end of the day the weather can change, and Lucas becomes freezing cold from one moment to the next. Sand and wind storms have become common in the city, according to residents.
"The winds have increased a lot in recent years because there are no more trees; it is a wind corridor area. This also causes soil depletion to accelerate. There is always the promise that technology will solve everything, but we are talking about natural resources that have a limit," warns researcher Márcia Montanari, from the Centre for Environmental Studies and Worker Health (Neast) at the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT).
On 28 May this year, the city was hit by a sand and wind storm that knocked down poles and tree branches, tore plastic awnings and caused the temperature to drop from 34 to 15 celsius degrees in less than 12 hours.
"These events are the result of a combination of exposed soil, prolonged periods of drought, and the arrival of more intense cold fronts. When a cold front advances, it displaces the hot, dry air over the region, also generating very strong gusts of wind. With the large area of dry, loose soil, dust is raised and sandstorms are created," explains meteorologist and climate analysis consultant Ana Paula Paes. She adds that Lucas do Rio Verde has been experiencing these storms more frequently because it is in an area of agricultural expansion, with large tracts of soil uncovered during the dry season.
The Instagram page ‘Lucas do Rio Verde Agora’ published a video of the storm on 28 May. In the comments, residents attributed the weather event to deforestation, which leaves the ‘land bare’ and the city unprotected in its surroundings.
"I've been in Lucas for seven years, and there's always the dry season, which is now, and the rainy season. During the drought, the weather cools down, but every year it gets colder, and dust enters the houses and covers them. Here, we can still protect ourselves with these plots of land on the side, but there are houses that are close to the plantations and are covered with sand," reported the owner of a hotel in the city.
News reports about Lucas do Rio Verde show the repetition of extreme weather events. In October 2008, a windstorm uprooted poles and knocked down trees in the city. The news reported that there was even hail.
In September 2019, heavy rain destroyed part of the roof of the transnational food company BRF – now MBRF, after merging with Marfrig – damaging machinery and flooding parts of the factory. In October 2023, more rain and strong winds uprooted six utility poles in Lucas, leaving residents without power for hours. In October 2024, a woman was swept away in a flash flood. She was saved by a group of five men who joined together in a human chain to hold her.
"It's much hotter, drier and more humid. [The rain] is no longer as regular. I think it's because the city is advancing a lot, a lot of asphalt, the water doesn't drain and doesn't cool the ground. And we no longer have the tall, dense vegetation that cools and brings rain and humidity. Today, it's just clearing and planting, clearing and planting, that's what happens. And it's going to get worse and worse,‘ said Damasília Santos, a farmer in a community garden who has lived in Sorriso, near Lucas, for 22 years.
Meteorologist Ana Paula Paes confirms Damasília's perception, which extends to the entire state. ’In Mato Grosso, we have observed some clear trends in recent decades. The rains are more irregular, with the rainy season starting later and later, and more frequent dry spells, which are short periods of hot, dry weather during the rainy season," says Paes.
According to her, minimum and maximum temperatures have also been rising, especially during spring and early summer. ‘Winds and storms are becoming increasingly intense, reflecting more energetic atmospheric systems. These changes are linked to global warming and regional deforestation, which alters the moisture cycle of the Amazon and the Cerrado. More deforested areas tend to feel these effects more quickly.’
Paes warns that if there is no consistent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and vegetation recovery by 2050, the number of extremely hot days could increase significantly, causing problems in different areas.
"For a city like Lucas do Rio Verde, the increase in temperature has a direct impact on health. There are more cases of dehydration, heat exhaustion and respiratory problems. It also affects agricultural productivity, as plants and animals suffer from heat stress. The city also feels the impact on energy consumption, the risk of fires and urban heat discomfort, especially in heavily paved areas with little tree cover."
Luquinha, a pig holding a corn cob in one hand and grains in the other, is the mascot of Lucas do Rio Verde. Photo courtesy town of Lucas do Rio Verde.
More corn ethanol, more diseases
And it is not only climate change that threatens life in Lucas. Recent news about the increase in corn ethanol production, especially with the installation of new plants, has caused concern for researcher Wanderlei Pignati, from Neast, UFMT. This is because the increase in the supply of biofuel also means an increase in grain production and, consequently, an increase in the use of pesticides.
A physician and doctor of public health, Pignati has studied the growth in the prevalence of congenital malformations, which occur during fetal development, as well as childhood cancer, miscarriages and low birth weight babies in regions of high grain productivity in Mato Grosso, such as the municipalities of Sorriso, Lucas do Rio Verde and Campo Novo do Parecis, among others.
"In Brazil, for every thousand children born alive, four have malformations. In Mato Grosso, there are 10 [per thousand], and in the four [most productive regions of the state], it varies from 20 to 37 children. The cause of this is the widespread use of pesticides," says the doctor and researcher.
A recent analysis by InfoAmazonia and Tatiane Moraes, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation's Climate and Health Observatory, shows that a child born in Lucas do Rio Verde has a 20% higher risk of being born with congenital anomalies than a child born in Juruena, 670 kilometres away, but in the same state. Still comparing the same cities, the risk of fetal deaths is 30% higher in Lucas.
The explanation for this is the massive presence of crops in Lucas do Rio Verde – more than 50% of the municipality's land cover – and the use of pesticides, compared to less than 5% of crops in Juruena.
In a master's thesis supervised by Pignatti in 2011 at UFMT, the presence of pesticides was found in the milk of mothers living in Lucas do Rio Verde. At the time, the municipal government reacted badly to the national repercussions of the results and questioned the investigation methodology.
In 2017, Pignati, in another study, also pointed to the use of pesticides on crops as the likely cause of illness among people exposed to them. At the time, using data from 2015, the study showed the predominance of soybean, corn and sugarcane crops in the country, with these crops accounting for about 70% of pesticide use nationwide. Mato Grosso was already emerging as the largest consumer of pesticides.
This high consumption of pesticides has been shown to be a risk factor for the development of cancer in the state, according to researchers at the National Cancer Institute, Inca.
A study conducted by researchers in Mato Grosso analysed cancer deaths in the region between 2000 and 2015 to understand whether the numbers were rising or stable. There were 28,525 cancer deaths, with the most frequent types being lung, prostate, stomach, breast, and liver, while the highest mortality rates occurred in the Mid-North Mato Grosso regions – Lucas do Rio Verde, Nova Mutum, and Sorriso, Baixada Cuiabana, and South Mato Grosso.
According to biomedical scientists Katia Soares da Poça and Marcia Sarpa de Campos Mello, from Inca, the standardized cancer mortality rate in the state also ramped up from 74.3 to 82.0 per 100,000 inhabitants between 2000 and 2015, with a general upward trend.
In addition to the damage to health, there is also damage to public coffers. Pignati said that an ongoing study in Mato Grosso indicates that, for chronic pesticide poisoning, the amount spent on treatment may be 20 to 30 times higher than that indicated in a 2012 Fiocruz study on acute poisoning. The treatment of childhood cancer would be one such chronic case.
In Mato Grosso, 242 cases of pesticide poisoning were reported between 2015 and 2017, resulting in an average cost of R$ 718.15 per individual treated by the SUS (Brazilian public health system).
‘When considering the total amount for the period, also taking into account underreported cases, public spending on care in the state represented approximately R$ 8.6 million ($1.57 million USD) over these three years, or approximately R$ 2.8 million ($500,000 USD) per year in Mato Grosso,’ calculate Poça and Mello.
Most cases of poisoning occurred in the North region (44.62%) and in the municipalities of Nova Mutum, Sinop and Sorriso (23.13%), with 66.53% of exposure occurring in the workplace, 44.21% were accidental poisonings and 76.86% of these poisonings were due to single acute exposure, i.e., occurring once in a 24-hour period.
The use of genetically modified grains, especially corn, in the production of animal feed and ethanol, which is labelled as sustainable by agribusiness entrepreneurs – even though it may not be – may also influence the increase in the consumption of pesticides, such as the herbicide glyphosate, used on soybeans. ‘The consequence of this is the emergence of pest resistance, increasing the consumption of other types of pesticides,’ says Pignati's 2017 study.
In 2025, Mato Grosso deputies approved by 21 votes to 3 a bill reducing the distance limits for the application of pesticides in relation to settlements, cities, towns, neighbourhoods and water catchment areas, isolated dwellings, animal groups and springs. Previously set at 300 metres, the distance was reduced to 25 metres and, in some cases, eliminated entirely.
‘When we asked, at a public hearing, what scientific criteria they used to reduce [the minimum distance] to zero, they said there was no scientific criteria, they said “it's our will”,’ recalls Márcia Montanari.
For INCA experts, the impacts of this new measure by the Mato Grosso legislature will be severe. In the short term, there will be an increase in acute poisoning in different age groups, with the onset of nausea, headache, fatigue and other symptoms.
"In the medium and long term, there will be an increase in the number of cases of various conditions such as miscarriages, infertility, malformations, depression, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, hormonal changes, serious respiratory diseases and many others. Another possibility is an increase in cancer cases," say Poça and Mello.
We requested an interview with the mayor of Lucas, but we did not receive an answer from his PR team. For Nilfo and Hilária, the future is frightening. ‘There is no way we can produce healthy food if we are surrounded by pesticides," they say.
