Abstract
How have environmental and land policies evolved in the northern Brazilian Amazon to accommodate soybean expansion? In this article, we focus on the case of Roraima, where soybean acreage increased by 257 % between 2018 and 2021. We analyze to what extent this acceleration can be attributed to J. Bolsonaro's rise to power. We use an interdisciplinary method to identify the spaces, actors, and economic and legal mechanisms involved in this process. Data come from field research (observations and interviews), official documents, analysis of satellite images, and geoprocessing. Soybean cultivation began in 2000. Since 2009, a state system of simplified environmental licensing has facilitated the installation of companies. Soybean-livestock integration promotes land concentration and land valuation in forest areas but is limited by the 80 % Legal Reserve requirement and the lack of land regularization, especially in the frontier area. Since 2018, the federal government, in partnership with the state government, has simplified land title regularization and unlocked the reduction of the Legal Reserve in forest areas in 2022 (from 80 % to 50 %). These reforms represent an increase of 1.6 million hectares of forest subject to legal deforestation in the state. It is the beginning of a new phase of agro-extractive expansion in the north of the Brazilian Amazon, in the heart of the forest, and not just on its edges, as in the past.