Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
director at the Nature Conservancy, which brokered the deal, the agreement goes bey-
ond the standard set by the Brazilian government, which allows 20 percent deforestation
on farmland. Under the terms of the agreement—known as the
soy moratorium
—Cargill
won't buy soy from any farm where a single tree has been cut since the moratorium began.
In contrast to the Ambé project, which works from the bottom up, by way of local stake-
holders, the soy moratorium is a top-down approach that depends on technology. The way
it works is that soy growers must register their land, and Nature Conservancy and Cargill
staff show up and walk the perimeter of each farm with handheld GPS devices. The farm is
then monitored by satellite for any deforestation that occurs within its limits. Brazil already
had a very sophisticated system for monitoring deforestation—it depends in part on inform-
ation from NASA—but without knowing exactly which land belonged to which farmer, the
government couldn't do much about it. Now, though, they can monitor each specific farm
to make sure trees aren't being cut down, and cheap GPS technology makes it remarkably
inexpensive to graft this additional monitoring onto the existing satellite-based system.
The crazy thing about the soy moratorium—aside from the role that people in chicken
suits played in creating it—is that it actually seems to have worked. It is still in effect, and
soy-driven deforestation in the Santarém area has stopped dead. I know this because Adam
showed me a graph, based on Brazilian government data, that shows the region's cumu-
lative deforestation. Immediately upon the implementation of the soy moratorium, the line
goes flat.
Luiz, the soy farmer, testified to its effectiveness. “If you're not operating legally, you
can't sell a single grain of soy,” he groused. “You have to be legal, or Cargill won't pay
you.” If it weren't for the moratorium, he told us, “we would plant everywhere.”
Luiz was pissed off about it, but from a conservation point of view, the agreement had
been so effective that there were now hopes to apply a similar system to the problem of
cattle ranching. If successful, it could prove to be a major innovation in controlling defor-
estation in the developing world.
I couldn't stand it. Was there no end to the good news? Let's recap a few of my most
unwelcome findings:
a) Amazonian deforestation tour conducted precisely at time of record-low deforesta-
tion.
b) Topic of soy as a journalistic focus revealed to be a mistake provoked by a passing
fad among the environmental media.
d) I therefore fail to address the real problem, which is still beef.
