“Brazil suspends Amazon Soy Moratorium, raising fears of deforestation spike”, 22 August 2025
…Brazil’s antitrust regulator suspended a key mechanism for rainforest protection, the Amazon Soy Moratorium, on Aug. 18, less than three months before the nation hosts the COP30 climate summit.
The Amazon Soy Moratorium is a 19-year-old voluntary private-sector agreement to not source soybeans from areas deforested after 2008 in the Brazilian Amazon. It is estimated to have kept at least 18,000 square kilometers (6,950 square miles) of rainforest standing.
Environmental NGOs, including Greenpeace Brazil and Imaflora, warn that suspending the soy moratorium could put huge areas of the Amazon rainforest at risk of being deforested and replaced with soy farms…
Brazil’s federal antitrust agency, the Administrative Council for Economic Defence (CADE), issued the suspension. It asked moratorium members — including multinational commodity giants such as Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and Cofco — to remove all public information about the moratorium, including impact and results, from their websites.
“This kind of behavior sounds much more like a political decision than a technical concern,” João Gonçalves, a senior director at environment nonprofit Mighty Earth, told Mongabay by email. “If this political decision isn’t reversed quickly, it will cost the Amazon dearly”…
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