Quarta de Soja (Soy Wednesday) elevates the importance of transparency in the production chain

"Transparency and disclosure of who is compliant with the Pará Green Grain Protocol is important. With this, the market can select and require companies to have the same level of socio-environmental commitment. The market can no longer allow a company that is not compliant to be on equal terms in the market with others that are fully complying with the protocol", said the legal representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pará, Daniel Azeredo, during the debate that took place during the Quarta da Soja (Soy Wednesday) webinar organised by the Soybean on Track Program on Wednesday (11/8). The topic of the debate was the Green Grain Protocol: challenges and opportunities in the soy value chain to promote more responsible production. 

The green grain protocol creates guarantees for companies, producers, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and others to prevent illegal deforestation in soybean farms in Pará state. With the knowledge that the protocol will not solve the deforestation issue alone, the first edition of Soy Wednesday brought to the table a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of the protocol and its connection with other soybean-related solutions.

Lisandro Inakake de Souza, Project Coordinator of the Climate and Agricultural Chains Initiative at Imaflora and also coordinator of the Soybean on Track Program, contextualised the topic with data from the last annual deforestation rate in the Amazon published by Prodes in 2020, which was 11,0000 square kilometres, with an increase year by year, and which should be no different in 2021. He explained that the focus on the Green Grain Protocol in Pará is justified because the state accounts for 45% of deforestation in 2020. The Soy Moratorium monitoring shows that 17 top soybean producing municipalities in Pará account for 43% of deforestation in the state.

The host of the event, James Allen, Olab's executive director, was joined by Fabiana Reguero, Amaggi's Social-Environmental Manager, and Giovana Baggio, Sustainable Agriculture Manager, from The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

"The challenge is to bring everybody into the Green Grain Protocol. We cannot have a lack of equality in the market. If a company has a strict purchasing policy regarding socio-environmental issues and another one does not, it is obvious that the former will have a competitive advantage. We no longer have a socio-environmental problem but an economic one", Azeredo added.

"At Amaggi, we believe in concerted solutions. When we talk about a complex issue to be solved, such as deforestation, which also involves social issues, we know that environmental protection in Brazil is what the whole world wants to know about. Therefore, joining forces is essential. We will not solve this problem alone or in a single chain. We joined the protocol to think of combined solutions so we can reach an effective result", said Reguero from Amaggi.

"For years civil society has been discussing landscape planning and how the Amazon can have agricultural production combined with conservation of biodiversity and its natural remnants that are so important to the world. The Green Grain Protocol, combined with the Soy Moratorium and other agreements and individual commitments by companies, promote actions to be effective in reducing deforestation, as well as monitoring social issues, such as slave labour, pointed out Baggio, TNC manager.

Watch the video of the debate here