Soy farmers destroy Amazon despite a deforestation agreement with global traders

Brazilian soy farmers have been pushing deeper into the Amazon rainforest in order to plant more crops. This puts pressure on an historic deal signed 20 years ago that was meant to slow down deforestation.

A loophole exists in the Amazon Soy Moratorium. This voluntary agreement was signed in 2006 by the top grain traders of the world that they would no longer buy soy produced on deforested land after 2008.

Moratorium

The law protects the old-growth forest that has not been previously cleared. However, it excludes other types of vegetation or forests that have grown back on land that was cleared in the past, also known as secondary forests.

Farmers can plant soy on this land without violating the Moratorium's terms. They could even sell it as deforestation free.

The latest official annual report, which covers crop year 2022-2023 showed that the soy planted in virgin forests has nearly tripled from 2018 to 2023. This amounts to 250,000 hectares or 3.4% of the total soy grown in the Amazon.

The study is only limited to those municipalities which grow more than 5,000 hectares soy.

Xiaopeng Song is a professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland. He has been tracking the expansion of soybeans over the last two decades and found that the forest loss was more than four-times as high.

Satellite data that he exclusively analyzed for shows that 16% or 1.04 million hectares of Brazilian Amazon land is under production for soybeans. This includes areas where trees were cleared since 2008, which was the date set in the Moratorium.

Song said, "I'd like to see secondary forests and recovered forests included in the Moratorium." It creates loopholes, if we limit it only to primary forests.

Abiove overseeing the Moratorium on deforestation said in a press release that the agreement is intended to curb the destruction of old growth forests, while other methods have broader criteria which could lead to inflated interpretations.

Abiove refused to provide granular information, so it was impossible to compare the two.

The data in the Moratorium Report comes from Brazil's National Institute of Space Research. Its assessments are internationally recognized and independently monitored.

Abiove confirmed that it knew some soy had been planted in areas that were replanted after forests were cut.

The difference in how a forest is defined has huge implications on conservation. Climate change-driven deforestation, heat and drought are bringing the rainforest to a tippingpoint beyond which its irreversible transformation begins. Scientists are calling for an end to deforestation and increased efforts in reforestation.

Viola Heinrich is a postdoctoral researcher with the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences who has studied extensively secondary forests in Amazon. She said that these are "crucial" to limiting global climate change, even if they were initially less biodiverse.

We cannot achieve our goals

Paris Agreement

"We cannot increase the carbon sink without increasing ecosystems' regeneration." She said.

Carbon storage and absorption

Secondary forests store less carbon than old-growth trees, but they absorb it faster.

'STOLEN AGAIN'

Farmers were clearing land on a hot afternoon in late 2012, near Santarem. Santarem is a port town by the Amazon River. The stacked felled trees, which were ready to be burned, were neatly arranged in rows. Satellite images revealed that some of the trees were over 30 years old and part of an abandoned secondary forest, which was once cleared to make room for cattle.

Gilson Rego of the Pastoral Land Commission (a church-affiliated organization that works with locals who are affected by deforestation) pointed out areas in which soy was planted.

Rego has seen the area dedicated to crops grow in the last five year.

More than a dozen farmers, both subsistence and soy producers, who were interviewed said that the Cargill terminal nearby was the most attractive because it reduced logistics costs. Cargill has not responded to requests for comments.

Brazil is set to surpass the United States as the largest soy exporter in the world by 2020.

Around two thirds is shipped to China. Cofco, the largest buyer in China, has committed to the Moratorium. It is almost exclusively used to fatten livestock for meat production.

Song estimates that if the Moratorium had not been implemented and conservation efforts were not undertaken, an additional 6,000,000 hectares would have been lost in the Brazilian rainforest to soy, based on the rate of expansion. He said that Bolivia was a hotspot for deforestation.

Brazilian farmers have been against the Moratorium for years. They complain that even small amounts of deforestation will cause traders to refuse purchases from whole farms. Abiove has considered changing this policy.

At the moment, thousands of properties covering 10% of the footprint of soy in this region are blocked.

Adelino Avelino noimann, vice president of Para state's soy farmers' association, located in Santarem, said that the soy boom created opportunities for a country in poverty.

Noimann said, "It is unfair that other countries could deforest or grow while we are now held back by laws not even ours."

LEGAL ATTACKS Farming organizations allied with right-wing political parties, which were once a fringe group, launched lawsuits against the Moratorium and legislation in Brasilia and half a dozen agricultural states to weaken the provisions. A justice of Brazil's Supreme Court announced at the end of April that it would allow Mato Grosso to remove tax incentives for signatories of Moratorium.

The full court must still confirm the ruling.

Andre Nassar has hinted at the possibility of a weakening of the rules in order to appease the farmers.

Nassar, in April, told Senators that the solution was not to end the Moratorium. "Something must be done." ADM, Bunge Cargill Cofco, Louis Dreyfus Company, and other global traders signed the agreement in 2006. Abiove, the grain traders that it represents, have refused to discuss details publicly. However, Greenpeace which has been involved in some discussions and is part of Abiove's group, stated last year that traders were pushing to weaken this agreement behind closed doors.

Even with its flaws, environmentalists such as Andre Guimaraes - an executive director of IPAM, a nonprofit organization that monitors the accord - said it was still important.

He said, "We continue to see the expansion in soy in Amazon." But it could have been worse." Environmentalists say that loopholes should be closed to strengthen the law.

Para is a place where farmers have been moving from all over the country. This includes the heartland of soy, Mato Grosso.

Edno Cortezia is the president of a local farmers' union. He said that the farmers can harvest soy, wheat, and corn on the same plot.

In the municipality of Belterra, near Santarem only a cemetery and a school were spared from soy expansion.

Raimundo Edilberto Sousa Freitas (the principal) showed court documents and supporting evidence in two cases where 80 children and teachers displayed symptoms of pesticide poisoning last year.

The records show that a farmer was fined later, but the crop continues claiming more area each year.

The last remnants of the once lush biome are a few large trees, protected by law, that remain in the soy fields. (Reporting and editing by Manuela Andréoni, Brad Haynes, and Claudia Parsons; Additional reporting by Ana Mano, Sao Paulo)

(source: Reuters)