After 20 Years, Brazil's Moratorium On Deforestation To Grow Soybeans Is Disintegrating
Nearly 20 years ago, a Brazilian lobbying group for soy trading and processing companies signed onto a historic conservation deal known as the Amazon soy moratorium. The voluntary agreement prohibits members from buying soybeans grown on lands deforested after July 2008. Proponents of the deal say that it has been highly effective at protecting forest land without impeding soy production over the last two decades. Under the moratorium, growing soy on other lands — like those cleared before 2008, or pasture or savannah lands — is still fair game, and reports indicate that production on such lands in the Amazon has quadrupled since 2006. Now, amid changing political headwinds, the deforestation agreement is in danger.
On January 1, a new law eliminating the tax benefits for members of the moratorium took effect in Mato Grosso, the Brazilian state that produces the most soybeans in the country. These tax benefits functioned separately from the moratorium; nevertheless, following the new law, the lobbying group for soy traders — including multinational firms like Cargill, Bunge, ADM, and others — announced its plan to leave the moratorium, which experts say will put more of the Amazon rainforest at risk of deforestation. Without participation from these major corporations, the agreement risks becoming largely toothless — and exacerbating growing challenges faced by agricultural producers today.
The exodus of agrifood groups from the moratorium is “entirely self-defeating,” said Glenn Hurowitz, founder of Mighty Earth, an environmental advocacy group focused on conservation. For 20 years, “these companies’ commercial success has relied on the soy moratorium,” argued Hurowitz. “Gutting it is probably going to create a lot of marketing and market access challenges for them.”
In recent years, there has been growing criticism of the conservation deal as privileging those same multinational corporations over Brazil’s own agricultural producers. Soy farmers and cattle ranchers have long opposed the moratorium, saying it hampers their business. (Raising beef is reliant on soybean production, as one of the major uses of soy globally is animal feed.) Brazilian farmers have been pressuring the state of Mato Grosso to re-level the playing field between them and soy traders, which one farmer lobbying group referred to as a “purchasing cartel.” The dissent came to a head when, last year, Brazil’s anti-competition regulator attempted to squash the moratorium by ordering participating companies to cease complying or face hefty fines.
EDIT
https://grist.org/business/a-major-agreement-to-protect-the-amazon-is-falling-apart-after-20-years/