Video (3min 9sec): Celebrating the Soya Moratorium. The announcement of the extension of a moratorium on soya expansion provides hope for the Amazon rainforest.
Greenpeace: "The announcement from soya traders in Brazil provides hope for the Amazon rainforest. We're not out of the woods yet, but this decision and the history of campaigning that got us here should be celebrated and built upon to protect all ancient forests for the future.
The Amazon campaign
Rising international demand for soya had led many farmers to drive deforestation to make way for soya cultivation. Back in 2006, we published ‘Eating up the Amazon’, a report on our investigation into the links between soya in the supply chains of leading international food companies and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
At the same time, we dressed up as chickens and heckled McDonald's, one of the companies using soya from the Amazon for Chicken McNuggets back then. The costumes were sweaty but, luckily for us (and the planet), McDonald's quickly reacted and agreed to join us and lead a call for change.
Responding to this pressure, the major soya traders operating in Brazil announced a two-year moratorium, which came into effect in July 2006, stopping for the time being the trade in soya grown on newly deforested land. Although recent figures show an increase in Amazon deforestation rates, after three years of decline, the first field evaluations show that the soya harvested this year in the Brazilian Amazon has not come from newly deforested areas. In other words, the moratorium is doing its job and halting soya related forest destruction, despite the pressure from rising soya prices.
