FAQ

R.: It's a voluntary agreement within the soy supply chain that aims to eliminate deforestation driven by soy cultivation in the Amazon biome, ensuring that trading companies do not purchase or finance soy produced in areas deforested after July 2008.

R.: The Moratorium pact was signed in 2006, after the publication of Greenpeace's report Eating up the Amazon pointed out that soy cultivation was advancing into the Amazon biome as a major driver of deforestation, causing embarrassment, especially for European soy consumers.¹

R.: The Moratorium was initially signed by the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove), the National Association of Cereal Exporters (Anec), and civil society organizations, represented by Greenpeace.
The Soy Working Group (GTS) was then established, a multi-stakeholder dialogue platform where the Moratorium's agreements and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms are negotiated, defined, and reviewed. In 2008, the Ministry of the Environment (MMA) joined the pact, and in 2012, Banco do Brasil also became a signatory. In May 2016, the Moratorium was renewed indefinitely.

R.: Associated and signatory companies commit not to trade, acquire, or finance soy originating from areas deforested after July 2008 within the Amazon biome, as well as from areas listed as embargoed for deforestation by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and/or on the list of analogous to slave labor² under the conditions described in the agreement.
The Moratorium was instituted on July 24, 2006, but, with the approval of the Forest Code in 2012, the reference date became July 22, 2008.

²This list is currently issued by the Labor Inspection Secretariat, of the Ministry of Economy of the Federal Government.

R.:

• Conduct external audits on soy purchases by associated companies during the harvest year (July to June) and make the results available to the Soy Working Group.

• Seek viable solutions to increase the monitoring of soy purchases from indirect suppliers.

• Request the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) registration protocol for purchase and financing operations.

R.: The Soy Moratorium is a voluntary and pioneering mechanism for controlling deforestation in the Amazon, being the first market agreement to introduce the criterion of zero deforestation in a production chain. Precisely because it does not allow new conversions, it can be said that the Soy Moratorium is complementary to the Forest Code, helping to keep standing even the forest that could be legally deforested, as in cases of forest cover exceeding the requirements for Legal Reserve and Permanent Preservation Areas.

R.: The geographical scope is the Amazon biome. Soy polygons larger than 25 hectares identified in areas deforested after July 2008 on private rural properties located in municipalities with a cultivated area equal to or greater than 5,000 ha of soy are monitored. In the 2018-2019 harvest year, 95 municipalities in the states of Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Amapá, Maranhão, and Tocantins were considered, comprising 98% of the soy cultivated in the biome. Rural settlements, Indigenous Lands, and Conservation Units are not part of the monitoring scope, nor is soy cultivation in non-forest phytophysiognomy areas, due to the absence of public data.

R.: No, the monitoring methodology does not evaluate the entire rural property, only soy cultivation in deforested areas within the selected municipalities, based on the criteria above. Thus, deforestation polygons without soy cultivation that might be on soy properties will not be identified, nor will the property itself. However, once a non-compliant soy polygon with the Moratorium is identified, the entire property is blocked by the signatory companies of the pact.

R.: The spatial analysis and monitoring of municipalities are carried out by the company Agrosatélite, and it uses the combination of images from sensors with different temporal and spatial resolutions obtained throughout the crop cycle, allowing for the identification and mapping of soy areas with a high degree of accuracy. It's important to note that the deforested polygons identified with soy after 2008 are audited by Inpe for their veracity and accuracy. From these polygons, a list of non-compliant properties with the agreement is generated and used by companies to block these farms in their supplier registries. Based on these lists, all company purchases are annually audited by an external audit that attests to the companies' compliance or non-compliance with the Moratorium.

R.: The database of deforestation occurrences in the Amazon biome, made available by Prodes/Inpe, is used, in addition to other databases from the following institutions: Agrosatélite, National Indian Foundation (Funai), Ministry of the Environment (MMA), Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (Mapa), state secretariats of Agriculture of Mato Grosso and Pará, and the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra).

R.: Based on the results obtained from the spatial analysis, the resulting polygons are cross-referenced with existing property data in the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry) and other public databases of the covered states. The resulting products are the lists of producers and farms non-compliant with the Soy Moratorium.
The lists are promptly made available to the signatory companies of the Soy Moratorium so that they can feed their corporate purchasing systems and support the process of blocking purchases from irregular sources, aiming to meet the Moratorium's deforestation criterion.
Annually, companies that purchased soy from the biome must undergo third-party audits to verify the purchases made.

R.: The lists are not publicly available and are provided only to the associated and signatory companies of the Soy Moratorium and to the auditors hired for annual verification, after signing a Confidentiality Agreement. In accordance with the General Data Protection Law (Law nº 13.709/18), this measure aims to preserve confidential producer data such as name, CPF/CNPJ, property name, municipality, and geographical location.
An annual public report is issued that describes the methodology used for deforestation identification and presents, for each harvest, the results related to soy monitoring in the Amazon biome, in the context of the Soy Moratorium.

Yes, there are three important conditions for this. The first is when the producer has more than one property with soy cultivation and one of them is on the list. In this case, the compliant property will not be blocked for commercialization; however, during the audit, purchases must be registered as purchases with reservations. The second is when the producer signs a term of commitment with the GTS, committing not to cultivate soy in the identified deforested area and not to carry out new deforestation on the property. Finally, the third condition refers to a false positive or error in the identification of deforestation, leading to the property's exclusion from the list.

R.: Yes, the Soy Moratorium Protocol. For the verification process, signatory companies receive complementary materials to the producer lists to guide the auditing firms, which are prepared annually within the GTS. These include: the Soy Moratorium Protocol, the Audit Report Template, the Audit Flowchart, and a template for developing a Corrective Action Plan.

R.: Audits occur annually, with a schedule defined in GTS meetings. The Soy Moratorium audit cycle generally runs from May to November and consists of the following stages: review and approval of reference documents, auditor training, execution of audits, and evaluation of results by the evaluation committee, which is composed equally of civil society and associations representing the private sector.

• A balance is struck for companies that have contracted and reported independent audit results.

• Compliance with the Moratorium's requirements is verified (not trading, acquiring, or financing soy from deforested areas of the biome after July 2008).

• The implementation and maintenance of a soy commercialization management system in the Amazon biome are evaluated.

• The quality of the companies' management system is assessed (supplier registration, Moratorium lists, embargo and slave labor lists, geomonitoring system, blocking and unblocking system, and verification of purchase control).

• The quality of the audit reports is evaluated (conclusion, clarity, accuracy, and completeness).

R.: The results of the audit evaluation, conducted by the evaluation committee, are presented to the GTS, and specific reports are sent to the companies. These reports aim to obtain clarifications and present observations and recommendations on the audit process and the company's performance. Companies are also invited to make a public version of their audit report available.
Non-conformities identified and issued in reports serve as input for constructing gradual and continuous improvement solutions that the evaluation committee submits to the GTS.