Posted on 11 June 2010
Sao Paolo, Brazil: Members of the soy industry
have agreed to finalize new global standards
to improve soy production, moving responsible
soy closer to being available in the marketplace.
The Roundtable on Responsible
Soy (RTRS) on Thursday adopted voluntary
sustainability standards that will help
ensure that current soy production and further
expansion of the crop will be done in an
environmentally sound and socially responsible
way that avoids clearance of native forests
and high conservation value areas. The standards
also call for soy production to avoid polluting
the environment and creating social conflicts.
“WWF welcomes the finalized
RTRS standards, however, now we need to
pull together to make the system work.”,
said Cassio Moreira, Coordinator of WWF
Brazil’s Agriculture and Environment Program,
who also serves on the RTRS board. “The
results of the field tests show that the
standards are practical and can be implemented.
Now producers need to start the certification
process and buyers need to demand RTRS certified
soy as soon as possible, so that the market
starts moving and the share of soy under
responsible cultivation expands.”
Most importantly, the
standards require producers to take certain
measures to protect the environment. Those
include prohibitions on the conversion of
forests and areas with high conservation
value – such as rich savannahs –reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, and eliminating
the most hazardous pesticides in soy farming.
“Now that the production
standards have been finalized, the RTRS
must finalize its certification system to
verify compliance with the standards and
establish methods to trace the soy,” Moreira
said.
Once this certification
and traceability system is adopted, the
RTRS estimates that responsibly-produced
soy will be available as part of the next
soy harvest in South American countries
in March 2011.
The RTRS also agreed
to develop a voluntary annex for RTRS members
that wish to produce or trade in soy that
is labelled as GM free.
The agreement is the
result of years of dialogue between WWF,
other NGOs, farmers, and the soy industry
and finalized at the group’s fifth annual
meeting this week in Brazil. The RTRS currently
counts more than 140 members, including
major private interests in the soy industry,
smallholder farmers, feed mill operators,
traders, retailers, financial institutions,
and social and environmental organizations.
The new standards, known
as Principles and Criteria, require producers:
To comply with the law
and adopt good business practices
To maintain good working conditions, such
as paying workers the prevailing wage.
To dialogue with surrounding communities,
such as equitably resolving land disputes.
Not to expand into native forests such as
the Amazon and other habitats with high
value such as certain areas of the Cerrado
and Chaco
To engage in good agricultural practices,
such as reducing soil erosion, water use
and pollution, and the safe handling and
minimizing the use of agrochemicals.
A pilot version of the standards had been
adopted at the RTRS annual meeting in May
2009, and field tested during 2009 and 2010
by RTRS member producer companies in, Brazil,
Argentina, Paraguay and India. The results
of the field tests were used as input by
the working group that finalized the standards
that were ratified by the association on
Thursday.
The RTRS reported that
approximately 224,000 hectares were included
in these field test projects, which are
expected to produce a total of 650,000 tons
of RTRS field-tested soy.
Expanding soy production
has been linked to the dramatic loss of
natural habitats, especially forests and
savannahs, in South America. Soy fields
have already replaced much of Brazil's savannahs
( the Cerrado) and the Argentinean Chaco,
as well as threatening the Amazon by pushing
cattle ranching into that area. The expansion
of soy production also threatens the livelihoods
of local communities. Agriculture contributed
to the disappearance of most of the Atlantic
Forest in southern Brazil and eastern Paraguay
in the 1970s and 1980s – a scenario that
could be repeated in other regions as the
global demand for soy is expected to double
by 2050.
Soybeans are used in
the production of edible oil, foods, and
feed for cattle, pigs, poultry and fish.
More recently, soy has been used in the
production of biofuels to meet increasing
energy needs.
