In 1985,soybeans and its export modelwere already present in the Atlantic Forest, with 2.4 million hectares, but advanced strongly over the decades. Forty-one years later, in 2025, the grain monoculture occupied 11.11 million hectares, an area 4.6 times larger, accounting for 25% of national production. Sugarcane, on the other hand, increased its area by 5.3 times, reaching 6.15 million hectares and ensuring half of the national planting. The data was released on Monday, Tree Day (21), by MapBiomas and SOS Mata Atlântica, which gather and present annual information on the biome with the lowest proportion of native vegetation in the country.
Native vegetation occupies 32% of the territorywhileagriculture and livestock farmingaccount for 63%. In recent years, this growth has not been higher because much of the agricultural expansion (79%) has occurred through the conversion of pastures, which lost approximately 11 million hectares during the period. This phenomenon contributed to the increase in secondary forests.
"The expansion and intensification of agriculture and livestock farming are decisive in determining both deforestation and regeneration. After two decades of agricultural advancement over native vegetation, in recent years agriculture has begun to replace pastures, which have in turn been yielding areas to secondary vegetation. This is the trajectory for achieving the necessary goal of zero deforestation and large-scale restoration," comments Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, executive director of SOS Mata Atlântica.
Today, one in every four hectares of native vegetation has regrown after deforestation. The suppression of native vegetation in the Atlantic Forest shows a trend of decline over the historical series. Since the 2000s, the area of suppressed native vegetation has been below 2 million hectares in each 5-year period.
Despite positive results, the expansion of agribusiness continues, catering to international markets, as seen in the case of forestry, which quadrupled its area with eucalyptus production.Targeted at major pulp and paper companies.Paraná and Santa Catarina accounted for 46% of the forest area in the biome by 2025.
Urban area grows, even in the islands.
With over half (52%) of Brazil's urbanized area, the Atlantic Forest has seen cities expand 2.5 times in the last 41 years, now covering 2.3 million hectares. The states of São Paulo, Paraná, and Minas Gerais recorded the largest absolute increases in urbanized areas between 1985 and 2025.
Urban growth is also advancing on most of Brazil's 195 coastal islands. On four of the ten largest, the urbanized area has more than doubled. Ilhabela, on the north coast of São Paulo, has increased 14.5 times. Itaparica, the only island in the Northeast, has seen the city grow 6.4 times.
On the other hand, four other of the ten largest islands showed an increase in native vegetation area between 1985 and 2025: Ilha das Peças (PR), Ilha do Cardoso (SP), Ilha do Superagui (PR), and Ilha Grande (RJ), totaling a small 1.7% increase in natural coverage areas over the period.