Leader in proportion in the Amazon, Rondônia was the state that received the most in the region since 2015, with more than 30% of the total. There were 507 pieces of equipment costing R$319 million in public funds in a decade.
At the top of the regional distribution ranking are also the states of Tocantins, with 253 units and expenditure of R$109 million, and Mato Grosso, with 229 machines and expenditure of R$145 million.
Although the equipment may have different purposes, its dissemination in the forest area is seen by environmental technicians as an aggravating factor for deforestation and the installation of illegal mining.
The survey of Sheet includes products such as track and tire tractors, hydraulic excavators, backhoe loaders, wheel loaders, motor graders and road rollers. The calculation does not take into account smaller equipment, such as agricultural tractors, trucks and cars.
The count The starting point is 2015, as it was the year in which a change in the Constitution forced the Executive to pay for the individual amendments requested by deputies and senators and inaugurated a period of increasing control by the Legislature over the Budget, changing the way politics is done in the country.
In the last decade, Brazilian congressmen allocated more than R$900 million in amendments for the purchase of heavy machinery distributed throughout the Legal Amazon.
At least 1,649 pieces of equipment were delivered to 467 municipalities through programs from the Ministries of Defense, Agriculture and Regional Development.
More than 30% of this equipment went to Rondônia, governed by Marcos Rocha (União Brasil) since 2019. The state was also administered by the current senator Confúcio Moura (MDB-RO), from 2011 to 2018.
Rondônia has had the highest deforestation rate proportional to the territory among the Amazon states since 2015.
There were 12 thousand km² of vegetation suppressed, according to data from the Prodes system (Brazilian Amazon Forest Deforestation Monitoring Project by Satellite), released by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research). This is equivalent to 5.1% of the state’s area.
Only the capital, Porto Velho, received 329 machines. According to the MapBiomas monitoring platform, the city ranked third in the national ranking of deforestation in municipalities from 2019 to 2025, behind only Altamira and São Félix do Xingu, in Pará.
A Sheet sent a request for a statement to the Government of Rondônia about the deforestation data and receipt of machines via email, messaging app and telephone, but did not obtain a position from management on the results of the surveys until the publication of this report.
Data from the federal transparency portal Transfere.gov show that most of the amendments that supplied machines to Rondônia in the last decade were destined via the Calha Norte government program, a project created by the Brazilian Armed Forces more than 40 years ago and whose original objective was strategic military action on the borders.
In recent years, Calha Norte has had its historical purpose distorted to become one of the preferred pipelines for Brazilian congressmen. His led the federal government to transfer the program from the Ministry of Defense to the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development in 2025.
In Calha Norte amendments alone, Rondônia received 402 pieces of equipment, totaling R$234.1 million in the last decade. This number represents more than half of the 755 machines distributed by the program in the Legal Amazon.
Through the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development, the state obtained R$80 million to purchase 94 machines; of these, 89 went to Porto Velho. From the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, Rondônia collected 11 products.
When analyzing the profile of deliveries to Tocantins, second in the ranking of distributions, another fundamental public entity appears in the political chessboard of amendments: the state-owned Codevasf (Companhia de Desenvolvimento dos Vales do São Francisco e do Parnaíba).
Boosted by billions of reais in parliamentary amendments in the (PL), Codevasf changed its historical vocation of promoting irrigation projects mainly in the Northeast to transform itself into a state-owned company delivering paving works and machines even in metropolitan regions.
It expanded its operations from the semi-arid region to the Amazon states of Pará, Tocantins, Amapá and Mato Grosso and had this new profile maintained under (PT), as well as its control by congressmen linked to the center.
Through Codevasf, Tocantins benefited from the delivery of 174 heavy machines financed with amendments totaling R$70 million.
Another public body relevant to deliveries is the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, which distributed R$140 million for the purchase of large equipment in the Amazon.
The state of Mato Grosso alone obtained more than half of this amount, R$71 million, of which R$59 million went to the capital Cuiabá. The second state that received the most from the ministry was Pará, with R$48 million.
According to Hugo Cardoso, master in civil engineering from UFV (Federal University of Viçosa), the bulldozer, for example, is primarily used for removing vegetation.
“The main function of these machines is to deforest, open and finish roads. The tracked tractor is not only the most suitable for deforestation, it is fundamental”, he states.
In an interview with Sheet in September, the president of Ibama (Brazilian Institute of Renewable Natural Resources), Rodrigo Agostinho, said that there is great concern in the supervisory body regarding the illegal use of machines donated with amendment resources.
“What we see is a mistaken use, an illicit use, in many places this machinery is an instrument of crime. In the same way that someone uses a weapon to commit a robbery, the machine is the instrument itself for committing the environmental crime of deforestation and illegal logging”, stated Agostinho.
In October, a report from Sheet showed that federal deputy Zezinho Barbary (PP-AC) uses his share of funds to regularize construction work during the period when he himself was mayor of the Acre municipality of Porto Walter.
The works led to the road passing through his family’s rural property and subsequently invading demarcated indigenous land.
The following month, the minister of the (Supreme Federal Court) accepted the request and ordered the Federal Police to investigate the case
