Brazil protesters lift blockade of Amazon grain shipping route

By Ana Mano

Brazilian indigenous protesters have lifted a blockade of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, reopening a critical grain shipping route linking farmers to the Miritituba river port, traders association Abiove and a toll road operator said on Tuesday.

Munduruku indigenous activists intermittently shut down the road, also known as the BR-230, beginning on March 25 to put pressure on Brazil's Supreme Court to overturn a 2023 law limiting indigenous land rights.

Grain traders said the protests were preventing the shipment of around 70,000 metric tons of grains, worth almost $30 million, every day.

Abiove said it learned Tuesday morning that the indigenous leaders had secured a meeting with Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes and had ended the blockade.

Via Brasil BR-163, the company that administers 1,009 kilometers (627 miles) of the highway linking farms in Mato Grosso state to the river port, also confirmed the end of the protest.

Mendes' office said a meeting was scheduled for April 15.

Some 15 million tons of soy and corn were loaded onto barges at Miritituba last year bound for larger shipping ports down river. That corresponds to over 10% of Brazil's total export volumes for those grains.

Shipments via the river port are forecast to rise around 20% this year as Brazilian farmers, who are expected to benefit from an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, market a record soybean crop and bumper corn harvest.

Even before the protests were launched, access to Miritituba had been plagued by the poor condition of the BR-230.

Bottlenecks along an unpaved five-kilometer stretch of the road close to the port town were blocking some trucks coming from farms for as long as three days, ANATC, a lobby group representing freight companies, said on Tuesday.

Via Brasil BR-163 said a new access will be built when courts grant it permission to expropriate land for new road construction.