The Paraguayan Chaco region has been home to various groups of Indigenous peoples for millennia. But over the past few years, the land has been invaded by agribusinesses for the purpose of unsustainable livestock production.
As a result, the Chaco is losing forests at a rate of 240,000 hectares per year. At the current rate of deforestation, in 24 years, all Chaco forest cover would all be gone, and the effects will be mostly irreversible. To make matters even worse, the land is increasingly being covered in genetically modified soy and the toxic agrochemicals that go hand-in-hand with it. The soy is primarily produced as feedstock for factory farms in Europe and other parts of the world. Cattle ranchers and soy planters have stolen Indigenous land in the Chaco and forced its people into slave labor.
