Yellowstone in Montana may have the most romanticised cowboy culture in the world thanks to the TV drama series of the same name starring Kevin Costner. But the true home of the 21st-century cowboy is about 7,500 miles south, in what used to be the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, where the reality of raising cattle and producing beef is better characterised by depression, market pressure and vexed efforts to prevent the destruction of the land and its people.
The toll was apparent along the rutted PA 279 road in Pará state. Signs of human and environmental stress were not hard to find during the last dry season. Record drought had dried up irrigation ponds and burned pasture grass down to the roots, leaving emaciated cattle behind the fences. Exposed red soil was whipped up into dust devils as SUVs and cattle trucks sped past on their way between Xinguara and São Félix do Xingu, which is home to both the biggest herd on the planet and the fastest erasure of forest in the Amazon.
Later this year, Pará will host the Cop30 climate conference, which would be an ideal moment for Brazil to demonstrate progress on a new system to track livestock and reduce emissions from deforestation. That system should be completed by the end of 2026. But few ranchers believe this will happen because of the huge gulf between what locals want and what the world needs.
