faq

A.: The Moratorium was initially signed by the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Producers (Abiove), the National Association of Grain Exporters (Anec) and NGOs, represented by Greenpeace.
The Soy Work Group (GTS) was then established, a space for multi-stakeholder dialogue, in which oversight mechanisms and Moratorium assessments can be negotiated, defined and reviewed. The Brazilian Environmental Ministry adhered to the pact in 2008 and in 2012 Banco do Brasil became a signatory as well. In May 2016, the Moratorium was renewed for an indefinite period of time.

A.: No, the monitoring methodology does not evaluate the entire area of the rural property, only the planting of soybean in an area with deforestation in the selected municipalities, based on the criteria above. As such, deforestation polygons without soybean crops that may be located on soybean properties will not be identified nor will the property. However, once a soybean polygon that does not comply with the Moratorium has been identified, the entire property is blocked by the companies that have signed the pact.

A.: A database of deforestation in the Amazon biome, made available by the Prodes project/Inpe, is used as well as other databases from the following institutions: Agrosatélite, National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), Environmental Ministry (MMA), Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Agriculture, Livestock and Supply Ministry (MAPA), state departments of Agriculture of Mato Grosso and Pará states and INCRA, the institute to regulate land reform and register rural properties.

A.: The Soy Moratorium is a voluntary and pioneering mechanism to control deforestation in the Amazon and is the first market agreement to introduce the criteria of zero deforestation into a productive chain. Precisely because it does not allow new conversions, it can be said that the Soy Moratorium is complementary to the Forest Code since it helps to upkeep even forests that could be legally deforested, as in cases of forest covers above the Legal Reserve and Permanent Preservation Area requirements.

A.: Based on the results acquired through the spatial analysis, the resulting polygons are compared to the existing property data in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) and other public databases of the states. The resulting products are the lists of producers and farms that do not comply with the Soy Moratorium.
The lists are readily available to the companies that have signed the Soy Moratorium so they can input the information into their corporate purchasing systems and subsidize the process of blocking purchases from irregular sources in order to meet the deforestation criteria of the Moratorium.
The companies that have purchased soybeans from the biome must every year undergo third-party audits to verify their past purchases.