Soy Moratorium in Mato Grosso: Deforestation undermines the agreement

Brazil is one of the world leaders in replacing forests with agriculture. Agribusiness has responded to international public opinion by introducing the Soy Moratorium, (SoyM), an agreement that aims to inhibit the destruction of forests to plant soy in the Brazilian Amazon. This pressure led to the creation of a joint working group comprised of representatives from the civil society, soy producers, and finally the Brazilian government. In this article, we analyze all the areas that were forested in 2006 and are now planted with soy in the Amazonian municipalities in the state of Mato Grosso. During the period in which we analyzed deforestation between 2009 and 2016, we identified 54 municipalities that were not in compliance with SoyM; a total of 59,972 ha had been converted to soy plantation. These results can be ascribed to several reasons, one of which is, essentially, that SoyM has not been able to reach the offending producers. If we consider deforestation starting in 2006, the amount of soy grown in violation of SoyM would be equivalent to an estimated total of 350,000 tons(-1), or 9700 truckloads, only in the 2016/17 harvest. Nevertheless, even with these less satisfactory results, SoyM, the first voluntary zero-deforestation agreement implemented in the tropics, should be seen as a commendable initiative to engage all segments, including society, the productive sector, and the government, in this process. It merely needs to be refined, with all the groups involved in discussing new strategies in an international forum.