Located on the side of the BR-163 highway, the district of Miritituba, in the town of Itaituba, in the Brazilian northern state of Pará, is a strategic point on the soybean route from Mato Grosso to the foreign market. Thousands of trucks arrive there every day to unload goods at Cargo Transshipment Stations (ECTs, in Portuguese), large areas made up of yards, silos and ports installed on the banks of the Tapajós River. They can handle up to 18 million tons of grain a year.
A consequence of soy transportation is that the district's residents are left to deal with the damage, such as accidents caused by trucks, dust, noise pollution and environmental impacts. “It starts with a rip in the forest, on the riverbank, and then you see structures being erected,” says Ivaneide Lima, a teacher and resident of the district, about the arrival of ports that serve agribusiness companies.
Miritituba was born in the 1970s as an agro-village where residents were dedicated to family farming. There are no soybean plantations in the region, but the impacts caused by grain logistics are part of everyday life and can be seen in the water, the forests and the streets.
“From Miritituba to Itaiuba, you used to see 20 or 30 botos [Amazon River dolphins]. Today, try to find at least one…” says real estate agent Josenaldo de Castro.
The 15,000 or so residents are forced to live with the intense flow of trucks, which cross a road close to their houses, the noise of the vessels and changes in the environment, ranging from the loss of vegetation to clouds of smoke raised by the trucks.
All this is accompanied by a disorderly population increase without the district having the necessary structure to absorb the impacts. “Suddenly, a village of residents – because it used to be a village in Miritituba – becomes an industrial district to accommodate all this flux,” says Lima.
Almost 2,000 trucks per day
According to the Association of Port Terminals and Cargo Transshipment Stations of the Amazon Basin (Amport, in Portuguese), the main ports on the Tapajós River are those in Santarém, run by Cargill, and the port terminals of Miritituba, run by Unitapajós, the result of the merger between the two agribusiness giants Bunge and Amaggi; Companhia Norte de Navegação e Portos (Cianport), in Portuguese; Cargill and Hidrovias do Brasil S.A.
Around 1,800 trucks leave Sinop (in the state of Mato Grosso) every day for the ports on the Tapajós River. The port complex installed on the Tapajós waterway is part of Arco Norte, a logistics corridor that integrates ports and transhipment stations in the states of Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, and Maranhão.
“You can see that Miritituba is covered by a cloud of dust produced by these trucks. And this directly affects people's health. There are many people, from children to the elderly, with health problems because of the dust,” says real estate agent Josenaldo de Castro.
In 2019, the ETCs of Cianport, Unitapajós and Hidrovias do Brasil handled around 8 million tons of grain, including corn and soybeans. In 2021, with the beginning of operations of the Cargill ETC, there was no significant change in handling, which reached 8.3 million tons. However, in 2022, grain handling by the four permanent ETCs in Miritituba reached 12.9 million tons, an increase of 54.9% compared to 2021.
Locals agree that the arrival of companies boosted the number of jobs in Mititituba. However, negative consequences arose too.
“Suddenly, there were so many workers inside the community that rent prices soared,” Lima says. The population increase is one of the impacts pointed out in a public civil action filed in 2026 by the Pará Public Prosecutor's Office, which highlights that the installation of large projects brings “different kinds of consequences, such as, for example, population growth and an increase in the urban limits of the municipalities."
For Lima, the rampant growth is related to a surge in violence. “It was a community that nearly had no violence cases. But today that’s impossible to hide,” Lima explains.
In the 2024 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, Itaituba is fourth among the highest rates of rape among the underaged in the country. In 2023, the town was 15th on the list of the 50 most violent cities in Brazil.
During the summer, residents deal with noise and stench
In a region in Miritituba where there is a lake formed by the Tapajós River, the Jardim do Éden neighborhood looks like a place where one can rest. There are houses without walls or gates, hammocks on balconies and mango trees in the backyards. A boat leans against the trunk of a small tree near the lake. In another location nearby, handwritten signs say: açaí for sale.
But all it takes is for the lake to fill up with the arrival of winter - the rainy season in the Amazon region - and the peace is interrupted by the ferries that dock near the houses. “One vessel arrives, another leaves. It's 24 hours. Throughout the winter, day and night,” complains one resident, who asked not to be identified.
A street in the Jardim do Éden neighborhood, in the district of Miritituba / Carolina Bataier/Brasil de Fato
In addition to the constant noise, locals have to cope with an oily smell that, according to reports, “is intense, as if you poured gasoline on the house.”
In Miritituba, the BR-163 highway meets the BR-230 highway, known as the Transamazônica highway, at a junction that attracts roadside restaurants and gas stations, where trucks that transport goods along the route are fueled with diesel. As a result, the district is also part of a fuel transportation route.
At Jardim do Éden Lake, there is an oil loading and unloading base for the gas stations in the region. “If you came during the winter, you'd see how big the oil stains are [on the water]. There are no fish left,” she laments.
With the movement of ferries, the lake has become dirty. Another resident, who also asked for anonymity, says fish taste like oil. “There was a time when fish were floating, all dead,” he says. “People with money can do this, right? That's the reality in Brazil,” he says.
Deforestation increases and may worsen with the Ferrogrão railroad
Itaituba is the Brazilian town with the largest mining area and lives off economic cycles based on exploiting natural resources. Environmental degradation led the town to be included in 2017 on the list of the most deforested areas in the Amazon, a monitoring mechanism of the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm, in Portuguese) of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Even under monitoring, deforestation in Itaituba continues to grow. According to data from the Project for Monitoring Deforestation in the Legal Amazon by Satellite (Prodes, in Portuguese), Itaituba's deforestation rate between August 2023 and July 2024 was 25% higher than that recorded in the previous period.
From Miritituba to Santarém, it's about 360 kilometers taking the BR 163 highway. In these two municipalities, the megastructures involved in soy logistics leave their mark: visible scars in the forest, “blank spaces” open to receiving thousands of trucks.
According to data from Prodes, run by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe, in Portuguese), between 2008 and 2022, the annual rate of deforestation in the municipalities along the Pará stretch of the BR 163 highway increased by 79%, reaching 1,378 square kilometers. These figures are even more impressive when it comes to municipalities known for being major soy producers in the Planalto Santareno region, made up of the municipalities of Santarém, Belterra and Mojuí dos Campos.
In Santarém, the annual rate of deforestation increased by 172%. In Belterra, it jumped from 70 hectares in 2013 to 1,600 hectares in 2021, which represents an increase of 613%. The record, however, is held by Mojuí dos Campos, where the annual rate of deforestation rose from 400 hectares in 2013 to 6,100 hectares in 2021, an increase of 1443%.
In the context of the soy expansion in the region, megastructures seem to advance without limits. A survey by the organization Terra de Direitos identified 41 port facilities, both public and private, linked to agribusiness activities that operate in the transport of grains, fertilizers, fuels and construction materials, planned, under construction or in operation in the municipalities of Santarém, Rurópolis and Itaituba. “We found 27 ports currently being used. Only five have complete documentation of the environmental licensing process,” says Bruna Balbi, Terra de Direitos' popular legal advisor.
The ports limit access to places that once belonged to the whole community. The barges stand in the way of the canoes and paddleboats locals use. To complete the agribusiness megastructures in western Pará, there is a proposal to build the EF 170 railroad, also known as Ferrogrão, which will connect Sinop to Miritituba. “They're not happy with the highway. Now comes the railroad. It's 933 kilometers of tearing up the forest,” warns priest and social activist Ediberto Sena, a Santarém resident.
According to the Inesc study, the railroad was included in the Logistics Investment Program (PIL, in Portuguese) in 2015, after pressure from Bunge, Amaggi, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. “These companies then formed a Special Purpose Entity, the business structuring company Estação da Luz Participações, and presented the Expression of Interest Proposal for the construction of the railroad section,” the research reads.
Currently being analyzed by the Federal Audit Court (TCU, in Portuguese), Ferrogrão will affect at least six Indigenous lands, where approximately 2,600 people live, and 17 conservation units.
A survey carried out by 40 civil society organizations indicates that the installation of the railroad could deforest 2,000 square kilometers of native forest, an area equivalent to the state of São Paulo. “Soy has a deadline, which unfortunately will leave us in the lurch,” says Sena.
*This article was produced in partnership with the INESC (Institute for Socio-Economic Studies).
Edited by: Rodrigo Chagas
