Summary
The Soy Moratorium is a pledge agreed to by major soybean companies not to trade soybean produced in deforested areas after 24th July 2006 in the Brazilian Amazon biome. The study aims to identify soybean planting in these areas using the MOD13Q1 product and TM/Landsat-5 images followed by aerial survey and field inspection. It is still premature to attribute the recent low deforestation rates in the Amazon biome to the Soy Moratorium, but the authors argue that the initiative has certainly exerted an inhibitory effect on the soybean frontier expansion in this biome.