Faculty Associate Rachael Garrett’s Work in Brazil’s Rainforest Featured by BU Research

Photo by Gabriel Sap

Rachael Garrett, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth & Environment and a Faculty Associate at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the study of the Longer-Range Future, was recently profiled in an article published by BU Research. The article highlights Prof. Garrett’s decade of experience in Brazil, where she has been interviewing farmers to better understand the challenges of extensive cattle ranching and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

In the past thirty years, Brazil’s rapid economic development has come at the cost of about 150,000 square miles of rainforest, which has been destroyed primarily to clear land for feeding and raising cattle. Government efforts to curb deforestation enjoyed limited success until 2008, but the rate of forest destruction has continued to rise in the past decade, with about 2,500 square miles lost between August 2016 and July 2017. Prof. Garrett’s research is focused on understanding the aspirations and motivations of farmers and ranchers in an effort to help them thrive while also curbing deforestation in Brazil.

Prof. Garrett has found two major reasons why people continue to raise cattle, even when it is less profitable than alternatives: a lack of access to infrastructure (e.g. good roads and refrigerated trucks) and, perhaps more importantly, the concept of “segurança” — ranchers’ sense of security, familiarity, family traditions, and local relationships.

Click here to read the full article.