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Brazil soy industry spots more Amazon clearing
20 Jan 2009 18:29:09 GMT
 Source: Reuters
SAO PAULO, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Brazil's grain crushing industry that has vowed to stop buying soybeans farmed on freshly cleared Amazon biome said on Tuesday it identified 365 newly deforested areas since its first survey, in July 2007.

The industry is now investigating if soybeans have been planted in the areas, from which it will refuse to purchase grains, the Brazilian Vegetable Oils Industry Association (Abiove) said.

"With the monitoring information available, we will stick to our commitment not to buy soybeans from areas deforested after the moratorium was announced, in 2006," said Abiove's general secretary, Fabio Trigueirinho.

The recently discovered areas add to 263 others which were deforested during the year finished in July 2007. At that time, none of them had been used for soy planting.

"Some (of the newly deforested) areas could have soy planted by what we have been told, but only isolated areas," Trigueirinho said.

A report with detailed information and photographs will be made public by March, when soy sales in Brazil tend to peak and companies would still have conditions to impose a ban on soy from specific areas, he said.

Abiove contracted Globalsat to inspect the areas by air and ground and prepare the report, based also on satellite information provided by state-run Inpe (National Space Research Institute).

All major grain processors with operations in Brazil, such as ADM <ADM.N>, Cargill [CARG.UL] and Bunge <BG.N> participate in the Soy Moratorium, along with nongovernmental organizations like Greenpeace and WWF Brasil.

The initiative was launched in July 2006 and then renewed in June 2008, when the environment ministry first came on board and began to cooperate.

The Amazon biome covers an area of 419 million hectares (1.035 billion acres), the equivalent of 49 percent of Brazil's territory, according to the monitoring plan for 2009.

Currently, soybean occupy 1.7 million hectares of this area, mainly in Mato Grosso state and, in a lesser degree, in Para and Rondonia. Brazil's total area planted to soybeans is around 23 million hectares.

Technicians will need around 217 hours to fly over the soy-producing towns in the three states in order to raise information on land use, Abiove said. (Reporting by Inae Riveras; editing by Reese Ewing and Marguerita Choy)


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