The world’s largest buyers of Brazilian soy have announced a plan to exit from a landmark antideforestation agreement, the Amazon Soy Moratorium. The voluntary agreement between soy agribusinesses and industry associations prevented most soy linked to deforestation from entering global supply chains for nearly two decades.
The decision was communicated on Dec. 25, just before a new state tax law in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest soy-producing state, went into effect on January 1st. The law eliminates tax breaks and access to public land for any companies that were signatories to the moratorium.
The Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, known as ABIOVE, notified civil society groups that it would withdrawing from the voluntary pact, which is expected to take 30 days to go into effect.
“It is a setback that practically pushes us back 15 to 20 years,” Mauricio Voivodic, executive director at WWF-Brasil, told Mongabay by phone.
ABIOVE’s logo, along with those of multinational grain traders it represents, has already been removed from the moratorium’s official website. The companies including Cargill, ADM, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus Company and COFCO International are among the biggest soy purchasers and traders in the world.
It remains unclear if all companies will permanently leave the agreement.
“ABIOVE’s announcement is the beginning of a withdrawal process, but company participation is voluntary. Some companies may decide to stay and others may decide to leave. We still do not know,” Voivodic added.
The Soy Moratorium blocks the purchase of soy grown on land deforested in the Amazon after July 2008. Between 2009 and 2022, deforestation fell by 69% in municipalities monitored under the moratorium, even as soy planting in the Amazon rose by 344%, according to Greenpeace Brasil. Only 3.4% of soy produced in the biome now falls outside the agreement’s rules.
ABIOVE said that the agreement “fulfilled its historical role” and left an “incontestable legacy” for sustainable soy production in a statement shared with Mongabay. The group also said it expects Brazilian environmental laws to ensure continued forest protection and market access.
Environmental groups including WWF-Brasil and Greenpeace Brasil say withdrawing from the Moratorium will likely result in more deforestation and point out that the Brazilian Supreme Court will still weigh in on the constitutionality of Mato Grosso’s new tax law.
Between August 2024 and July 2025, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined by 11%. All states of the Brazilian Amazon registered a decrease in deforestation, except for Mato Grosso, which saw a 25% increase.
“Large multinational companies are prioritizing the maintenance of a state subsidy, using public funds, at the expense of guaranteeing zero deforestation, knowing that this decision will increase deforestation,” Voivodic said.
Banner image: Deforestation in Mato Grosso state. Image © Paulo Pereira/Greenpeace.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.