The humble soybean is in the middle of a geopolitical tangle that spans three continents and threatens to devour the world’s largest tropical savanna.

不起眼的大豆被夹在了一场横跨三大洲的地缘政治纠纷之中，也让世界最大的热带稀树草原陷入危机。

At issue is China’s enormous appetite for soybeans, millions of tons a year, mainly for cooking oil and livestock feed.

这场纠纷的焦点是中国对大豆的巨大需求，中国每年进口数百万吨大豆，主要用于食用油和牲畜饲料。

Sating that demand has taken a grave toll in recent years on the forests and grasslands of Brazil, China’s biggest supplier. That stands to get worse in the coming months, because China has all but stopped buying American soybeans, giving Brazilian farmers greater incentives to expand into new areas to grow soy.

近年来，这种需求已严重损坏了巴西的森林和草原，该国是中国最大的大豆供应国。情况可能将在未来几个月变得更糟，因为中国已经几乎完全停止购买美国大豆，让巴西的农民有更大的动力去扩大大豆种植面积。

Earlier this year, the government in Beijing slapped a hefty tariff on American soybeans in retaliation for hefty U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. Until then, America had been China’s second-biggest supplier. But now, farmers in the United States have sold not a single bushel to China from this fall’s harvest. Hopes of a relief package from the White House have been delayed by the government shutdown.

今年早些时候，为报复美国对中国商品征收的高额关税，中国政府对美国大豆征收了高额关税。这之前，美国曾是中国的第二大大豆供应国。但现在，美国农民今年秋季收获的大豆没有一蒲式耳卖给了中国。政府的停摆导致暂时不能指望白宫拿出救助方案。

Likewise Argentina, whose president, Javier Milei, met with President Trump on Tuesday. Argentina sold a mountain of soybeans to China this year after American farmers were locked out.

此外还有阿根廷，该国总统哈维尔·米莱伊本周二与美国总统特朗普会面。中国拒绝购买美国农民生产的大豆后，阿根廷今年向中国出口了大量大豆。

But no country stands to gain as much as Brazil, the world’s biggest soybean exporter. No surprise then that its powerful farm lobby is pushing to dismantle one of the most important industrywide measures, known as the Soy Moratorium and designed to limit deforestation in Brazil’s most famous biome, the Amazon.

但没有哪个国家比全球最大的大豆出口国巴西获益更多。因此也就不难理解，巴西强大的农业游说团体正在推动废除一项最重要的全行业措施。这项被称为“大豆暂停”的措施是为限制巴西最著名的生物群系——亚马孙雨林——的砍伐而设计的。

All of this is awkward for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He is hosting the next round of international climate negotiations in November, in the Amazon rainforest city of Belém. His administration has pledged to get deforestation under control.

所有这一切对巴西总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦来说颇为尴尬。他将于今年11月在亚马孙雨林城市贝伦主持下一轮国际气候谈判。他的政府已承诺让森林砍伐得到控制。

“The government is facing a very difficult situation,” Cristiane Mazzetti, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace Brazil, said in an interview. “There is an attack on one of the most important mechanisms for zero deforestation.”

“巴西政府正面临着一个非常困难的局面，”克里斯蒂安·马泽蒂在接受采访时说，他是绿色和平组织巴西分部保护森林的活动人士。“对零森林砍伐最重要的机制之一受到了攻击。”

Soybeans are Brazil’s biggest agricultural export. Its soy production has steadily risen over the past several decades. But it really accelerated in the past 10 years, as relations soured between Beijing and Washington, and China went looking for soybeans beyond the American Midwest. By 2017, at the start of the first Trump term, Brazil had overtaken the United States as the world’s leading soybean producer.

巴西最大的农产品出口是大豆。其大豆产量一直在过去几十年里稳步增长。但增长速度在近十年大为加快，原因是中国与美国关系恶化，中国开始在美国中西部以外的地方增加大豆采购量。特朗普2017年开始他的第一个总统任期时，巴西已超过美国成为世界上最大的大豆生产国。

中国山东省一个大豆加工厂的巴西进口大豆。

Now, relations between Beijing and Washington have sunk to a new low, and American farmers stand to lose their biggest global customer. For much of the past year, prices have been around $10 a bushel, down from $13 or so at the start of 2024.

现在，北京与华盛顿的关系已降到新低，美国农民可能会失去他们在全球的最大客户。过去一年的大部分时间里，大豆价格一直徘徊在每蒲式耳10美元左右，低于2024年初的每蒲式耳13美元左右。

“We’ve had strong growth in recent years, starting with that first U.S.-China trade war. And now, with the second one,” Lucas Costa Beber, vice president of Aprosoja, the Brazilian Association of Soybean Producers, said this week. “In the long term, if this situation continues, opportunities for Brazil will increase.”

“我们近年来有强劲的增长，从第一轮中美贸易战开始。现在又来了第二轮贸易战，”巴西大豆生产者协会(Aprosoja)副主席卢卡斯·科斯塔·贝贝尔本周说。“从长远来看，如果这种情况继续下去，巴西的机会还会增加。”

The prognosis for Brazil’s biosphere is less rosy.

但对巴西生态环境的展望就不这么乐观了。

Soy plantations tend to come up on land that had been logged and cleared previously for cattle grazing.

大豆种植园往往建在以前被砍伐和清理后成为牧场的土地上。

Today, soy plantations cover 40 million hectares, about 14 percent of the country’s agricultural land, according to MapBiomas, an independent group that uses satellite data. Most of that is in the Cerrado, a vast region of tropical savanna and forest corridors that is less a global celebrity than the Amazon but still a critical ecosystem for Brazil.

据使用卫星数据的独立机构MapBiomas，如今大豆种植园覆盖着4000万公顷的土地，约占巴西农业用地的14%。巴西的大豆种植园大部分在塞拉多生态区，那里有广阔的热带稀树草原，还有多条森林走廊，虽然没有亚马孙雨林那种全球知名度，但对巴西来说仍是一个至关重要的生态系统。

In the Cerrado lie the headwaters of the country’s biggest river basins, and it is vital to regulating rainfall patterns and temperatures. Deforestation has declined in the past year, as the administration of Mr. Lula has tightened enforcement. But nearly half of the native vegetation of the Cerrado has vanished, making way for cattle grazing and soy plantations.

巴西最大的河流流域源头在塞拉多生态区，该生态区对调节降雨模式和气温必不可少。随着卢拉政府加强执法力度，过去一年的森林砍伐已有所减少。但塞拉多生态区近一半的原生植被已经消失，转而被用于放牧和种植大豆。

“The Cerrado is disappearing,” said Luciana Gatti, a climate change researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. And now, she said, “the pressure to produce soybeans to export to China will be bigger.”

“塞拉多生态区正在消失，”巴西国家空间研究所的气候变化研究员卢西亚娜·加蒂说。她说，现在，“为出口中国生产大豆的压力将会更大。”

In 2023 alone, soy was harvested from more than 460,000 hectares of recently deforested land in the Cerrado, according to Trase, a nonprofit group that tracks deforestation in agricultural supply chains. That is an area bigger than Rhode Island.

据追踪农业供应链中森林砍伐情况的非营利组织Trase估计，仅2023年一年，塞拉多就有逾46万公顷新开垦土地用于种植大豆。其面积比美国的罗德岛州还大。

The Cerrado is not part of the Amazon. Soy-related deforestation hasn’t been eradicated entirely in the Amazon itself, independent researchers say, but it has been slowed significantly by the Soy Moratorium. Under that industry pact, which applies only in the Amazon region, the world’s major commodity traders jointly agreed to not buy or finance soy grown on lands that were deforested after 2008.

塞拉多不是亚马孙雨林的一部分。独立的研究人员表示，虽然亚马孙雨林本身与大豆有关的森林砍伐问题尚未完全根除，但“大豆暂停”已显著放缓了砍伐的速度。该行业条约只适用于亚马孙雨林，根据这项条约，全球主要的大宗商品贸易商联合签署了协议，不购买在2008年后砍伐的土地上种植的大豆，不为在这些土地上种植大豆投资。

Partly as a result, in 2023, soy harvest in the Amazon came from 150,000 hectares of recently deforested land, according to Trase figures, a far smaller area than in the Cerrado.

据Trase的数据，部分受此影响，2023年亚马孙地区的大豆种植，有15万公顷来自近期砍伐的土地，远小于塞拉多。

Now, pressure is mounting to suspend the Soy Moratorium in the Amazon. In August, Brazil’s national antitrust regulator briefly suspended it while the agency opened an investigation into alleged collusion among traders. A federal court immediately reinstated the moratorium, but its future remains uncertain.

现在，中止亚马孙雨林“大豆暂停”的压力越来越大。今年8月，巴西的国家反垄断监管机构曾在对涉嫌贸易商勾结行为展开调查，同时短暂中止了“大豆暂停”。虽然巴西的一家联邦法院随后马上将其恢复，但“大豆暂停”的前途未卜。

The soy producers’ association is leading the charge against the moratorium. Mr. Beber, the group’s vice president, called it a “trade barrier disguised as environmental protection.” He said the moratorium effectively favored other countries by regulating which Brazilian soybeans can be traded on the world market.

巴西大豆生产者协会正在带头反对该条约。协会副主席贝贝尔将其称为“伪装成环境保护的贸易壁垒”。他说，“大豆暂停”规定哪些巴西大豆能在国际市场上交易，实际上优惠了其他国家。

Mr. Beber said farmers could vastly expand soy production in areas of the Cerrado that are currently pasture lands. “All of those regions have degraded pastureland with potential to be converted into cropland,” he said. “It really just depends on economic and market viability.”

贝贝尔称，农民可以在塞拉多生态区目前的牧场上大幅扩大大豆种植面积。“所有这些地区都有已退化的牧场，它们有转化为农田的潜力，”他说。“实际上只取决于经济和市场可行性。”

The market viability for American soy farmers is murky.

美国大豆种植者的市场可行性前景黯淡。

Soybeans are the top U.S. agricultural export. The American Soybean Association has said American farmers risk losing their main customer, China, which brought in more than $12.6 billion last year, if the trade dispute continues. Meanwhile, tariffs on China have pushed up the costs of fertilizer and equipment in the United States.

大豆是美国主要的农产品出口物。美国大豆协会已表示，如果贸易争端继续下去的话，美国农民有失去主要客户中国的风险，中国去年购买了总值超过126亿美元的美国大豆。与此同时，对中国产品征收的关税已推高了美国的化肥和农机设备的价格。

Mr. Trump has swung wildly on whether he intends to meet with Mr. Xi at the end of the month at a trade summit in South Korea. If they meet, soybeans are sure to be on the agenda.

对于是否于本月底的一次韩国贸易峰会上与习近平会晤，特朗普的立场极其摇摆不定。如果他们举行会晤的话，大豆肯定在他们的议程上。