Brazil increases soybean planting on deforested land — farmers exploit loophole in soy moratorium

Brazilian farmers are increasingly planting soybeans deep in the Amazon rainforest, putting pressure on the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a voluntary agreement signed by leading global grain traders in 2006 to prevent deforestation, under which traders agreed not to buy soybeans grown on land cleared after 2008, Reuters reports.

The moratorium protects primary (old-growth) rainforests that have never been logged before, but excludes many other types of vegetation and forests, including secondary forests that have regenerated in previously cleared areas. While these lands are also important for preserving the fragile Amazon ecosystem, farmers can clear them and plant soy without violating the terms of the moratorium, and can even promote their products as being “deforestation-free.”

According to the latest official annual report on the Moratorium, which examined the 2022/23 season and municipalities where more than 5,000 hectares of soybeans are grown, the area of soybeans planted in virgin forests almost tripled from 2018 to 2023, to 250,000 hectares, representing 3.4% of all soybeans in the Amazon.

At the same time, scientists at the University of Maryland, who have been tracking the expansion of soybean acreage over the past twenty years, have found forest loss has more than quadrupled.

Satellite data analyzed specifically for Reuters shows that 16% of Brazilian Amazonian soybean lands (about 1.04 million hectares) are planted in areas where trees were cut down after 2008, the cut-off date agreed in the Moratorium.