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Brazilian soy industry extends moratorium on Amazon deforestation mongabay.com July 28, 2009
Carlos Minc, Brazil's environmental minister, announced the extension during a press conference in Brasilia. "Soya is no longer a significant force in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. However, we cannot say the same about cattle. The soya moratorium is a model for all relevant sectors," said Brazil’s Environment Minister Carlos Minc.
"We want to ensure that our actions help protect the Amazon rainforest. The moratorium has been a positive step in helping us control and monitor the soya used in our supply chain and we will continue to participate in efforts to stop deforestation in the Amazon," said Denis Hennequin, McDonald's Europe president. The certification system may include some form of ecosystem services payments to encourage landowners to conserve forest on private lands. "Compensation for environmental services would be a great incentive to the rural producer to stop deforesting. The industry expects that by the end of the year, in Copenhagen, the governments of different countries will commit to put a fund together for forest protection which will include compensation," said Carlo Lovatelli, President of the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oils Industries. Soy moratorium shows success
Soy production in the Amazon exploded in the early 1990s following the development of a new variety of soybean suitable to the soils and climate of the region. Most expansion occurred in the cerrado, a wooded grassland ecosystem, and the transition forests in the southern fringes in the Amazon basin, especially in states of Mato Grosso and Pará — direct conversion of rainforests for soy has been relatively limited. Instead, the impact of soy on rainforests is generally seen by environmentalists to be indirect. Soy expansion has driven up land prices, created impetus for infrastructure improvements that promote forest clearing, and displaced cattle ranchers to frontier areas, spurring deforestation. The Brazilian soy industry argues that it receives an unfair share of the blame for Amazon forest loss. It notes that producers in the legal Amazon face some of the most stringent environmental laws in the world, with landowners required to maintain 80 percent forest cover on their holdings. By comparison there are no legal forest reserve requirements for U.S. farmers. Greenpeace did not respond the multiple requests for comment.
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