Supermarket chains and the vegetable oil industry in Brazil have promised for another year not to purchase soybeans grown in recently deforested areas of the Amazon. The so-called soybean moratorium was agreed Jun. 17 by Environment Minister Carlos Minc, business associations and environmental organizations.

The first version of the agreement, signed in July 2006, was complied with in large part because of the lowest ever international prices for soy in 2007. Now the situation has changed as a result of the global food crisis.

“We have two problems: pressure from the prices and the technical capacity to cultivate soybeans. We predict that the next harvest will include beans from newly deforested zones,” Luis Laranja, of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), participant in the negotiations, told Tierramérica.