Written by Gustavo Vieira
Friday, 21 October 2011 08:26
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Under pressure from civil society organizations, companies and the government joined environmentalists, in July 2006, to boycott farmers who clear the forest to plant soybeans. Thus was born the soy moratorium. The Soy Working Group (GTS in Portuguese) was composed by the
Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove) and the Brazilian Association of Grain Exporters (ANEC), which together supply 90% of grain buyers. The GTS is also made up of: the National Institute of Group Space Research (INPE), the Ministry of Environment and organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Conservation International (CI), Friends of the Earth, Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon (IPAM), Institute of Forestry and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora), Rural Workers Union of Santarém and Greenpeace.
Together, they had decided to monitor satellite images and remove the crops of those who destroyed the Amazon to plant soy. The moratorium is well regarded in the international market, which was refusing to buy the products that came from deforested areas in the Amazon.
On the 7th of this month a group of international companies purchasing soy from Brazil - McDonald's in Europe, Mark and Spencer, and Carrefour, among others - sent letters of support for the initiative, reinforcing that industry, government and society should continue working together to change the agricultural production chain in Brazil at a time when environmental laws are under threat in the national Congress.
Despite the agreement, however, since the moratorium was established 11,698 hectares of forest have been cut down to make way for grain, according to the information in the
GTS Annual Report. Last week GTS extended the moratorium until January 2013. The deforested hectares amount to only 0.39% of the total area of planted soy throughout the country, while in the Amazon, this figure comes to 1.94 million hectares.
In 2007, most properties surveyed only had traces of burning and shallow cutting. In the images of 2010 many were already found to have rice plantations, a culture that precedes that of soybeans.
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In the monitored images it is not yet possible to know who is responsible for this deforestation, since few manufacturers have registered with the
Rural Environmental Registry (CAR in Portuguese). "We encourage membership, to one day, know who to charge for deforestation for planting", said Carlo Lovatelli. CAR is part of the federal program Program More Environment, which is the document the rural landowner uses to regulate possession of their property, declare the areas of permanent preservation (which are recognized as for public use, within the rural property and should be preserved according to the Forestry Code). CAR allows for fines to be reversed through providing environmental services. This also ends up being an instrument of oversight since the registration of the property makes it possible to monitor the property.
Federal programs such as Legal Land and even More Environment - where the Rural Environmental Registry is found - are voluntary and have very low membership among the producers. Yet the monitoring done by the GTS has improved - INPE has increased their monitoring of soybean plantations from 49 to 375,000 hectares in the last four years. This has increased the synergy of information on the ground and within environmental state bodies, but without the registration it is difficult to identify the owners. "There needs to be a change in the scale of application of government tools for environmental preservation, but we're investing in the structures. The support of soybean buyers for CAR is critical", said Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira.
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Joint action
The Agriculture and Livestock Confederation of Brazil (CNA) disagrees with the work of GTS and in a statement this week, disqualified the legitimacy of the participants. "The international NGO’s involved in the so called Soy Moratorium do not have the right to use laws created by public authorities like CAR, with the clear intention of blaming Brazilian growers, assuming functions beyond the reach of their remit", signs the note to the president of CNA, Senator Katia Abreu.
| Brazil is the second largest exporter of soybeans in the world behind the United States. The country’s 2011-2012 harvest is officially estimated at between 72.18 and 73.29 million tons, under the record 75.3 million tons from the previous cycle (2010-2011), due to the expectation of lower productivity, according to the Department of Commerce Exterior. |
For the Abiove President, Carlo Lovatelli, the initiative is already a mission with success, and has improved the Association’s collective image, going beyond just an historical confrontation between growers and environmentalists. “Today soybean is not the principal cause of deforestation in Amazonia. People who cut down the forest to grow crops won’t have a market to sell their products. The support of the international Buyers proves the case”.
"The decision of industry goes further than the law. It affects businesses that don’t want to buy soybean from deforested areas, because their customers don’t want to eat the destruction of Amazonia", says Paulo Adario, from Greenpeace. "We’re going to have to decide together what’s the best law for preserving our biodiversity and the markets for our products", adds Minister Izabella Teixeira. There’s no time limit for the soybean moratorium.
