Private companies, civil society organizations and the Ministry of Environment of Brazil have agreed to extend the Soy Moratorium – an agreement prohibiting the planting of soybeans on newly deforested areas in the Amazon region – until January 2014. Since the signing of the agreement in 2006, forest areas cleared for the cultivation of soy have been monitored by the National Space Research Institute. The data indicates that 18,410 hectares of forest were cleared for this purpose during the current season, an increase of 57 percent over the 2010/2011 harvest, when 11,690 hectares were deforested.

“We want zero deforestation. Despite the increase, progress has been made, given that a comparison of the 2010/2011 and 2009/2010 seasons revealed an 85 percent increase,” environmental activist Cassio Moreira, coordinator of the Agriculture and Environment Program at WWF Brazil – one of the signatories of the moratorium agreement – told Tierramérica.