South America Calling

Brazil's grain industry may extend its moratorium on Amazon soybeans into 2016 amid growing concern that deforestation has stopped declining.

News that Amazon forest clearance rose 29% in the 12 months to July 2013 and that Brazil refused to sign a United Nations deforestation pact has created negative publicity. In an effort to show it isn't easing up on the loggers, Environment Minister Izabela Teixeira asked the soy industry to rethink its decision to end the eight-year moratorium on buying soybeans from illegally or newly cleared properties in the Amazon basin.

"We are keen to show the world that we take our environmental responsibilities seriously," said Manoel Pereira, chairman of the Brazilian Vegetable Oil Industry Association (Abiove).

The moratorium is due to end Dec. 31, 2014, but Pereira cited May 2016 as a possible new end date. However, the terms have to be agreed first with the other environmental and government agencies involved.

Back in the early 2000s, deforestation of the Amazon was surging out of control. Although most cleared land was converted to pasture, the expansion of soybeans along the forest's edge in Mato Grosso was seen as a key driver.

Amid European threats of an embargo, the Brazilian soy industry announced the moratorium.

The ban has been effective. According to the industry, which estimates that soybean planting was responsible for just 0.7% of clearance in 2012 and the farm sector argues the ban is no longer necessary with the passing of the new Forestry Code.

The new code, passed in 2012, offers new clear guidelines on farmers' obligations in the forest.

The problem is that, two years after Congressional approval, the code is still not being implemented amid delays in the process of registering properties.

The focus is back on deforestation not just internationally, but also domestically after a government scientist last week released a report linking a recent heavy drought in the Southeast with Amazon clearance. Keen to reduce the level of flak, the government has already suspended the release of deforestation monitoring data and now wants the moratorium reinstated.

It is something farm leaders are loath to do as, after ceding to pressure on the soybean moratorium, they feel environmental groups and importers are trying to dictate where they can and can't plant.

"We started getting all these people trying to tell us exactly how we should produce. It is not acceptable," said Ricardo Arioli, environment commission president for the Mato Grosso Agricultural Federation.

An example was the Round Table for Responsible Soy, which Brazilian entities initially joined but then left after reducing deforestation to zero became a stated aim.

A decade ago, Brazil's soy industry found it tough to defend itself because of the way farmers had expanded into the Cerrado and sub-Amazon regions of Mato Grosso. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, farmers were actively encouraged to clear and environmental laws were sparsely enforced.

Over the last decade, amid much more rigid inspection, many farms have sought to meet their obligations, which the new Forestry Code provides a framework to do.

"We want to get to a situation where we can say that illegal clearance has nothing to do with us," said Arioli.

Visiting farms in Mato Grosso, it is clear the levels of preservation are much greater than in most other parts of the world. But the proximity to the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, means these soybean farmers will always be under great scrutiny.

(AG)

© Copyright 2014 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.