Marcelo Salazar has lived since 2007 in Altamira, in the state of Para, the king of deforestation in Brazil. An Amazonian municipality roughly the size of Florida has been deforesting at one of the fastest rates in the country for several years in a row.
The causes of deforestation range from land grabbing, cattle ranching, mining and hydroelectric dams to large-scale infrastructure projects. But since August, Salazar, an activist and sustainable entrepreneur, has had a new problem: soy.
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“Soya is moving closer to our area,” Salazar said. “This region is not a typical soybean region, but it is moving rapidly north from Mato Grosso state, which is one of Brazil’s largest soybean producing regions.”
One of the reasons behind this expansion is an attempt to end the soybean moratorium, a voluntary agreement between soybean trading companies, NGOs and Brazilian government agencies established in 2006.
Under the law, soybean traders agreed not to buy soybeans from land that has been deforested since 2008. A whole monitoring apparatus has been put in place to use technology such as satellite imagery to see where the soy comes from and where deforestation has taken place.
However, at the end of August, Brazil’s competition regulator CADE decided to open an investigation into the soybean moratorium, suggesting it may be a corporate cartel. Hoping for a result, the suspension was called off. The judge then lifted the suspension.
CADE then agreed to postpone the suspension. However, on November 6, just as COP30 began, Judge Flavio Dino of Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended the CADE investigation, at least until the Supreme Court rules on the matter. Sentencing is scheduled for November 14th to 25th.
Still, this suspension remains strangely vague and is already having an impact on the ground in Altamira.
“Soy doesn’t directly destroy forests,” Salazar said. “Investors buy land that has been deforested by others, such as ranchers. Then sellers go to back lots and start over. So far, direct deforestation is not occurring frequently, but even legal soybean cultivation drives up land prices, creating a destructive cycle. Just last week, I attended a rally of soybean investors in Altamira, where they cheered for an end to the moratorium.”
The suspension attempt comes at a controversial time for Brazil. In November, the United Nations climate change conference, COP30, will be held in Belém, Brazil, on the Amazon River, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the city of Altamira. At the same time, Brazil is experiencing trade tensions with the United States and is in the process of approving a trade agreement with the European Union and Mercosur, a South American trading bloc made up of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.
“The impact of the outage will be very severe,” said Mauricio Vojvodić, executive director of WWF Brazil, a Brazilian NGO that is part of the World Wildlife Fund network. “If the moratorium is banned, soybeans will spread across the Amazon with lightning speed.”
valuable deforestation
Holly Gibbs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Global Land Use and Environment Institute, said the moratorium helps preserve the environment. Gibbs was one of the authors of a 2020 study published in the journal Nature Food, which found that the soybean moratorium significantly reduced deforestation.
“The moratorium is one of the only measures that has actually been able to slow deforestation in the Amazon in a measurable way,” she says. “Not all deforestation has stopped, but the value of forests has decreased.”
Soya is the most valuable land use in the Amazon. The economic value per square hectare of soy cultivation is much higher than, for example, cattle farming.
“This is what has historically led to deforestation,” Gibbs says. “Someone might clear land and then expect soybean farmers to come and pay big bucks for that land. Soybeans have made deforestation in the Amazon very valuable. The soybean moratorium turns that logic on its head.”
Most of today’s deforestation is caused by cattle farming, which has a lower economic impact than soybeans. “Before the moratorium, about 30 percent of soybeans were harvested from recently deforested land,” Gibbs says. “Currently, less than 1 percent of soybeans come from recently cleared land. The moratorium has caused soybean production to decline rapidly.”
But critics of the moratorium say it means extra bureaucracy for farmers. Brazilian law already restricts deforestation in the Amazon, and most of it is prohibited. They say the moratorium creates a confusing double set of rules.
One of the most notorious opponents of the moratorium, the soybean producer group Aprosoja Mato Grosso, said in a statement that the private agreement lacks legal backing and would harm small and medium-sized farmers. Approsoya Mato Grosso did not respond to requests for comment.
But supporters say Brazil’s laws aren’t enough to actually protect the Amazon. Although deforestation is technically illegal in this region, it is often carried out without consequences for the people doing the logging.
“Brazilian laws are very good, but they lack control,” Salazar says. “Brazilian government agencies do not have the means to go into the countryside and enforce fines and ensure they are paid. They need the market’s help.”
Mercosur
The attempt to end the moratorium comes at a shocking time internationally. US President Donald Trump attacks Brazil on trade Subsequent restrictions Former President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of attempted coup d’état. Additionally, the EU has currently approved a trade agreement with Mercosur. The deal is controversial due to environmental concerns, among other things.
For example, it is doubtful that markets like the EU would want to buy soy from deforested land even if a moratorium were imposed. The EU is also introducing new EU deforestation regulations (EUDR) that will halt the import of goods such as soy if they are produced in deforested areas. However, that does not mean the moratorium is unnecessary.
“The EUDR bans certain products produced in areas that have been deforested since 2020,” says Raffaella Ferraz Ziegert, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Freiburg in Germany. “This conflicts with the moratorium’s 2008 deadline. The contradiction would open up an area the size of Ireland to soybean production, effectively granting amnesty to producers previously constrained by the moratorium.”
But the push to end the moratorium may also represent a turbulent field in Brazilian politics.
President Lula da Silva has publicly declared that he wants to stop deforestation, but he needs to ally with traditional elites who are more skeptical of environmental protection. The far-right movement that brought former President Bolsonaro to power remains popular in the country, and the end of the soy moratorium could mark a victory for Lula’s government.
“The Brazilian federal government does not have one position,” said WWF-Brazil’s Vojvodic. “Mr. Lula has had to assemble a coalition of different interests. The Ministry of the Environment is in favor of the moratorium, the Ministry of Agriculture is against it, and the Ministry of Finance is also concerned about the impact on trade. Meanwhile, Mr. Lula has not yet issued a statement. The Brazilian government is not homogeneous at all.”
Attempts to end the moratorium are also likely to embarrass Lula’s government during COP30. “The whole narrative of Brazil being a climate champion could be affected,” Vojvodic said. “People outside Brazil will see how the government’s narrative differs from the destruction of the Amazon that is happening there.”
wrong direction
Brazilian agribusiness sectors have resisted measures such as a soybean ban for decades. This halt attempt is just the latest in a decades-long push and pull between them and the environmental movement.
“It’s difficult to say exactly why the suspension attempt happened now,” said German university researcher Feratz Ziegert. “This has been a long process. There’s been opposition to a soy moratorium since the early 2000s. Little by little, on a wave of conservative politics, we’ve been trying to find room for this to happen.”
A parallel movement against the suspension of soybean sales is taking place in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. The state’s governor, Mauro Mendez, has issued a decree saying that all traders who comply with the soybean ban will no longer receive tax benefits. Approsoya Mato Grosso has also filed a lawsuit against the traders, demanding that they compensate farmers for alleged losses caused by the suspension of production.
“If these measures are truly successful, we don’t know what the future holds for the soybean moratorium,” Siegert said. “That would mean trading companies would suffer losses and private sector support could be shaken.”
Of course, opponents cannot force traders to buy from deforested land, with or without a moratorium. If the moratorium were to be banned, individual companies would be held responsible for not purchasing soy from deforested land in the Amazon, making it even more difficult to maintain sustainability commitments.
“The advantage of a moratorium is that it is an interdepartmental agreement with checks and balances,” Feratz Siegert said. “Real change on the ground happens when the whole sector agrees, rather than the voluntary efforts of individual companies.”
Back in Altamira, Salazar is concerned about the possibility of suspension being banned. This is because it not only accelerates deforestation but also represents a setback.
“We should go in a different direction,” he sighs. “We need to protect the Amazon and create alternatives to forest conservation, such as sustainable agroforestry. Instead, we face agribusiness expansion and large-scale deforestation.”
