Soy Moratorium Reinforces Commitment Against Deforestation

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The initiative's report shows that 98% of soy production in the Amazon biome took place in open areas before 2008

SÃO PAULO, July 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Soy Moratorium initiative is recognised as an example of reconciling large-scale agricultural production with environmental sustainability in its most critical issue: zero deforestation.

Held since 2006 by the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove) through the Soy Work Group (GTS), together with Anec (National Association of Cereal Exporters) and civil society organisations, the Moratorium ensures that soy produced in the Amazon biome and marketed by its signatories is free from deforestation occurring after 2008. It does this by cross-referencing the annual mapping of soy-planted areas in the biome with deforestation polygons identified by PRODES Amazon (Brazilian Amazon Forest Monitoring Program) of the INPE (National Institute for Space Research).

Now in its 15th year, the Soy Moratorium points out that between the 2007/08 and 2019/20 harvests, the area occupied with soybeans increased from 1.64 million to 5.41 million hectares, with a residual portion of 0.11 million hectares associated with deforestation after 2008.

This and other data are presented in the initiative's 2019/20 report, which consolidates the results of analysing and monitoring 102 municipalities accounting for 98% (5.29 million hectares) of the soy area in the Amazon biome. Based on PRODES' annual analyses, deforestation between 2008 and the PRODES-2019 assessment was 7.07 million hectares. Of this total, about 2.65 million hectares occurred in these 102 municipalities, where 107,674 hectares of soy were found in conflict with the Moratorium.

This area in question corresponds to 2.0% of the total cultivated with oilseed in the 2019/20 harvest, in the Amazon biome, and 4.1% of all deforestation in the 102 soy-producing municipalities.

Another fact pointed out by the study is the deforestation rate in these 102 municipalities before the Moratorium (2002-2008), which fell from 9,974 to 2,405 km2/year during the Moratorium (2009-2019).

"Currently, 98% of the area cultivated with soy in the biome is over areas deforested before 2008, which shows this initiative's effectiveness in terms of reconciling food production with environmental sustainability," explains Andre Nassar, president of Abiove.

To view this report: https://abiove.org.br/en/relatorios/soy-moratorium-thirteenth-year-report/ 

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1560987/ABIOVE.jpg