A young employee sits alone on a construction site on the quiet dirt back roads of Humait\u00e1, a municipality of 56,000 people in the south of Brazil\u2019s Amazonas state. All is silent, except for the sounds of local wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But soon, when the red earth is paved with concrete, these roads will rumble with trucks carrying soybeans – the vast majority planted and grown in other states – to the city\u2019s recently built, high-tech grain port.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis will be our mark of progress,\u201d said Luiz Schmidt, director of the local commerce association. \u201cIt will be a different region after.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Humait\u00e1 \u201cSoy Belt\u201d will integrate Humait\u00e1, a city that has been plagued by illegal deforestation, to the Amazon\u2019s booming river-based logistics corridor<\/a>, which already moves a fifth of Brazil\u2019s soy exports. From the new port, local experts say, cargoes will be sent down the Madeira and the Amazon rivers before heading abroad, mostly to China and Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the soy to be loaded in Humait\u00e1 will come from Rond\u00f4nia, a state that has historically been associated with beef and timber production \u2013 as well as illegal deforestation, fires and land conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) shows that in the last ten years, Rond\u00f4nia \u2013 which neighbours Mato Grosso, the heart of Brazil\u2019s soy industry \u2013 almost tripled the land space it uses to plant soybeans. Local producers expect 2021\u2019s production to hit 420,000 hectares<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s still a tiny amount in comparison to soy super state Mato Grosso, which planted 9.2 million hectares in 2019, but Rond\u00f4nia\u2019s production already dwarfs that of neighbouring Amazon states Amazonas and Acre, highlighting the advance of the soy frontier.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHumait\u00e1 is destined to be a great agro-industrial hub<\/blockquote><\/cite><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n