The Soy Moratorium on the Amazon Biome was renewed for the 4th time on July 2010, maintaining ABIOVE's and ANEC's member companies commitment not to acquire soybeans from any areas deforested, from July 2006 on, in the Amazon Biome.

For this 4th Monitoring of the Soy Moratorium, the Soybean Working Group (GTS) - whose members are ABIOVE's and ANEC's member companies, Ministry of the Environment (MMA), Banco do Brasil and Civil Society Organizations (International Conservation, Greenpeace, IPAM, TNC and WWF-Brazil) - agreed to continue with the partnership with INPE, National Institute For Space Research, to apply a tool specially developed to detect the presence of agricultural crops in deforested areas through a satellite image classification system. The Data Base of institutions such as FUNAI, IBAMA, IBGE, IMAZON and INPE were also used to obtain secure information on the soybean production participation on the deforestation process of the Amazon Biome.

Geoambiente company was hired to establish the dimension, land use and occupation status on the areas pre-selected by the INPE. The survey took 157 hours of aerial monitoring made between December 21st, 2010 and April 19th, 2011, reaching a total of 20,400 kilometers on 29 cities on Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia states. Several field visits to the rural properties and to cities' land registration offices were also made aiming the identification of the rural properties.

From the interpretation of the survey data it was possible to identify the presence of soybean cultivation in 11,698 ha deforested after July 2006. In the same period 4.19 million ha were deforested in all Amazon Biome, from which 2.97 million ha (71%) are located in the tree soybean producing states and 0.37 million ha are in the soybean producing cities.

The soybean producing area in the deforestations occurred in the Amazon Biome during the Moratorium period are equal to: 0.28% of the total deforestations, 0.39% of the deforestations in the three soybean producing states and 3.1% of the deforestations in the soybean producing cities. Brazil has 24.1 million ha with soybean production and 1.94 million ha are in the Amazon Biome. The soybean producing area in deforestations during the Moratorium period are equivalent to 0.05% of the total soybean producing area of the country and to 0.6% of the soybean production in the Amazon Biome.

The current report shows the methodology applied and the results achieved in the 4th year of the Monitoring of the Soy Moratorium with images of the data surveyed.

Use the links below for more information on the survey and to access the tables with data from each of the states surveyed. You can access the aerial photographs, satellite images and results of the 2010/11 monitoring cycle by clicking on the ID number of each area on the tables.