The fragile balance between agriculture and Amazon forest protection is cracking again in Brazil. The trade association Abiove, which brings together some of the world’s largest soybean traders, including Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, on Jan. 5 announced its withdrawal from the Amazon Soy Moratorium, the voluntary agreement created in 2006 to prevent the purchase of soybeans grown on deforested areas after 2008.
A choice that marks a step backward in a system of controls considered, for many years, among the most effective tools against deforestation. Meanwhile, 13 major European retailers who are members of the Retail Soy Group have written to the CEOs of major traders to ask whether they intend to adhere to the Moratorium individually, with what controls they will ensure “deforestation free” supplies: responses, required by Feb. 16, will guide their future purchasing decisions.
The moratorium was introduced in the midst of a crisis: by the early 2000s, forest destruction was running at a dizzying pace, with 28,000 square kilometers felled in 2004 alone, an area about one and a half times the size of Wales. Buoyed by global demand for animal feed, the soybean industry had ended up at the center of international pressure. The agreement, reached by NGOs such as Greenpeace, the Brazilian government and industry associations, established a clear ban: no purchases of soybeans from deforested areas of the Amazon after 2008.
Over the next decade, deforestation plummeted by 84 percent between 2004 and 2012, and the moratorium has often been cited as a decisive factor, with estimates of a saved area the size of Ireland. According to moratorium monitoring reports, in July 2025 less than 4 percent of soybeans were reported planted on newly deforested areas, while domestic production has tripled from mid-2000s levels, demonstrating that growth can occur without expansion in the forest.
Abiove’s decision comes after months of rising tensions. Producer groups, including Aprosoja Mato Grosso, have long argued that the moratorium imposes more restrictive rules than national legislation and penalizes growers who comply with the law but see themselves excluded from the commercial channels of large traders. Industry pressure has been matched by institutional initiatives, including audits by the federal antitrust authority on the moratorium.
On the political front, the Mato Grosso state government-the country’s largest soybean producer-has passed a rule removing tax benefits for companies that adhere to the moratorium. In November, a Supreme Court decision partially proved the state right, and, as of Jan. 1, traders who support the pact have lost their tax incentives; the attorney general has asked for a four-month extension for the law to take effect, but the signal to the industry has already come.
Abiove, in announcing the exit, called the agreement “an initiative that has exhausted its historic role.” It is a divisive judgment, of course. Environmental organizations point to its demonstrated impact, and warn that backtracking could undo nearly two decades of progress. WWF Brazil said in a note that “the Soy Moratorium was not abolished by legal imposition: it still exists, but it was consciously weakened by the voluntary decision of companies to withdraw. In doing so, these companies have signaled a willingness to prioritize access to publicly funded tax incentives, at the expense of combating deforestation and responsibility for the climate crisis.” Greenpeace warns that dismantling the pact risks triggering an increase in deforestation in the coming decades, with estimates projecting +30 percent by 2045 in the absence of a shared bond.
At the heart of the confrontation is the definition of responsibility along the global soybean chain. The moratorium has created a trade exclusion mechanism for those operating on newly deforested land, pushing traders and processors to control the origin of supplies. For environmentalists, the combination of satellite monitoring, blacklisting, and market pressures has changed economic incentives, making it less cost-effective to expand on forest areas.
For part of the agricultural sector, however, that system has shifted to private actors the burden of setting rules, sometimes stricter than state rules, with perceived arbitrary impacts on competitiveness. Abiove argues that individual members will continue to monitor their supply chains, but for NGOs, individual voluntary commitments hardly match the transparency and stringency of a collective moratorium.
Concrete effects will be measured in the coming months. The combination of sustained international demand for soybeans and favorable regulatory signals for expansion risks pushing the agricultural frontier deeper into the forest, especially in areas where enforcement is uneven. The moratorium, in its implantation, worked precisely because it created a clear and easily verifiable perimeter: a clear cut between what can enter the big supply chains and what stays out. Without that barrier, control reverts back to resting solely on public rules and their ability to be uniformly enforced. If traders do not reinstate equivalent commitments, the risk is that the share of “legal but unsustainable” soybeans will return to the Amazon region.
