Since 2007, Marcelo Salazar has been living in the place that is the king of deforestation in Brazil: Altamira, in the state of Para. About the size of Florida, the Amazonian municipality was the fastest deforester in the country for several years in a row.Drivers of deforestation there range from land grabbing, cattle ranching, mining and hydroelectric dams to large infrastructure projects. Since August, Salazar, an activist and sustainable entrepreneur, however, has had a new headache: soya.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“Soya is approaching our region”, says Salazar. “This isn’t a common area for soya, but it is rapidly pushing north from the state of Mato Grosso, one of the biggest soya producers in Brazil.”One of the reasons behind this expansion is an attempt to suspend the soya moratorium, a voluntary agreement between soya trading companies, NGOs and Brazilian government agencies, that was established in 2006.Under it, soya traders have agreed not to buy soya from land that has been deforested after 2008. An entire monitoring apparatus has been put in place to check where soya is coming from, and where deforestation has taken place, using techniques like satellite imagery.At the end of August, however, the Brazilian competition regulator CADE decided to open an investigation into the soya moratorium, suggesting it might be a company cartel. In expectation of the results, the mo …
