Cuiaba, Brazil – Agriculture in Brazil is booming, with beef exports alone generating almost $6bn a year, and soy production set to surpass that of the US to become the largest in the world.

This is especially true in Mato Grosso, the state at the heart of the forest’s southeastern “arc of deforestation”. Here, 136,000 square kilometres of forest have been cleared in the past 25 years – more than anywhere else in Brazil.

After moving to Mato Grosso in 1996 and witnessing what he likens to an “environmental holocaust” wrought by bulldozers, chainsaws and fire, Texan rancher John Carter came to believe there was only one way to slow the destruction: working with landowners.