Farms vs. forests in Brazil's Amazon as climate change hurts crops

As drought and floods wreak havoc across Brazil, farmers are feeling the effects of the climate emergency but despite poor harvests and rotting crops, they are fighting to protect their right to fell more trees and convert grasslands.

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Climate change cost the agricultural sector 240 billion reais ($44.3 billion) between 2020 and 2023, according to analysis of government data carried out by Eduardo Monteiro, leading researcher on climate risk at the agricultural research agency Embrapa.

That's 2.5 times more than in the previous four years but farmers in the world's seventh largest emitter of greenhouse gases are often reluctant to discuss climate change, Monteiro said.

"In many agribusiness strongholds", he said, farmers see climate change as an excuse to promote "conservationist practices".

And even though she has seen the effects of the climate emergency herself, Camargo does not believe the farming sector needs to change.

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