Date first published: 24/04/2025
Key sectors: agriculture; mining; forestry
Key risks: civil unrest; supply chain disruption; business disruptions; trade disruptions
Risk development
Between 26 March and 8 April indigenous protests in the Amazon rainforest, Para state, led to a disruption of soybean shipments via the Miritituba river port, halting 70,000 tonnes of grain per day worth US$30m. The Munduruku people partially blocked the Trans-Amazonian highway near Miritituba to pressure the Supreme Court to overturn the 2023 law aimed at limiting their land rights. The disruption came as Chinese demand for the country’s soybeans surged amid its trade war with the US.
Why it matters
Recent protests came against the backdrop of ongoing legal disputes between agrobusiness interests and indigenous communities over territorial rights. On 14 February the Federal Supreme Court (STF) conciliation committee proposed a bill to amend the contentious 2023 Time Frame Liberation (TFL) law. The bill purportedly aimed to reconcile competing land claims but instead highlighted their fundamental irreconcilability within the framework of the TFL law – seeking to limit indigenous lang claims to ancestral lands occupied before the 5 October constitution and allowing challenges to regularised lands.
Despite international and domestic criticism over attempts to weaken constitutionally enshrined indigenous sovereignty, the bill retained controversial provisions – such as requiring compensation to nonindigenous occupants for land reclamation. Rather than resolving the issue, the bill adds further barriers to the indigenous land demarcation process and has deepened the legal impasse, heightening tensions between the judicary and legislature. Although the STF is constitutionally responsible for protecting minority rights, the conciliation committee is dominated by ‘ruralist’ deputies and senators, backed by the powerful agrarian caucus in the legislature – a multi-party coalition aligned with agrobusiness.
With agrobusiness pushing for territorial expansion by curbing indigenous land claims, balancing agricultural growth and indigenous rights has become increasingly difficult. These competing interests – and their attempted reconciliation within the framework of the TFL law – are intensified amid the US-China trade war, from which agrobusiness stands to gain. Ongoing legal uncertainty over indigenous land rights risks prolonging the dispute and fuelling further civil unrest. This threatens Brasilia’s ability to capitalise on rerouted Chinese soybean demand away from the US, with Miritituba port shipments forecast to rise by around 20 per cent in 2025 amid escalating US-China tensions. The combination of legal uncertainty and rising Chinese demand for soybeans underscores the bill’s significance – not only for indigenous rights but also as a potential legal precedent – as the country’s soybean boom will likely intensify deforestation pressures, fuelling future land conflicts and legal disputes.
Background
In August 2024 STF Justice Gilmar Mendes created the conciliation committee following lawsuits challenging the TFL law, which Congress approved in September 2023, despite STF’s earlier ruling declaring its unconstitutionality.
However, the February 2025 bill further problematises land demarcation by allowing economic use of indigenous territories for public interest activities and relaxing prior consultation requirements. Despite its stated aim of reconciling indigenous and landowning interests, the removal of the time frame limitation provision in exchange for other compromises has faced opposition from both parties.
The bill also opens the land demarcation process to legal challenges by local governments and trade associations, further delaying a legal resolution. Even if approved by the conciliation committee, the bill remains vulnerable to scrutiny by other STF justices and resistance in Congress, where the agrarian caucus holds sway over the federal budget – including for land demarcation.
Risk outlook
Growing, unchecked influence of agrobusiness threatens to unravel the institutional equilibrium essential for settling competing land claims and balancing agricultural expansion with indigenous rights. Without such a balance, agrobusiness risks losing out on economic benefits from the current soybean demand boom, as legal uncertainty and civil unrest risks jeopardise investor confidence.