Live and Learn 5tion.” Then it rigged eleven million vehicles to circumvent environ-
mental rules before Volkswagen was caught. The year afterward, the
company repeated the same pledge verbatim.
In 00 , to preserve the Amazon rain forest a moratorium on plant-
ing soybeans was enacted, to wide acclaim. Henceforth, beans grown
by deforesting the Amazon would be rejected for purchase and export.
Nonprofit agencies would use satellite imagery to carry out surveillance.
Multinational grain-trading companies would enforce the rules. Sus-
tainability of the Amazon was about to happen.
Before the agreement, soybean acreage had expanded by 0 percent
in just two years. One year afterward, expansion was less than percent.
For retailers like McDonald’s and Walmart, nonprofits like Greenpeace,
and trading companies like Bunge and Cargill, a public relations night-
mare had been filleted into a public relations triumph.
I was heartened when I read the press accounts, and I featured the
moratorium in teaching materials and presentations as one example of
forward-thinking agriculture. I also congratulated associates I knew in
Cargill. But after eight years and two independent studies published
in Science, a darker picture emerged. The moratorium, it became clear,
only pertained to part of the Amazon, and the big decline in acreage
planted was misleading. Land cleared prior to the moratorium was
being used to accommodate further expansion. Pasture previously
created from deforesting was also being planted in soybeans. Farmers
had turned to clearing native vegetation and planting soybeans on land
just outside the moratorium’s boundaries. If need be, harvested beans
were being “laundered” through other properties.
Indeed, as market opportunities for farmers beckoned and govern-
ments chose not to act, moratoriums provided cover for deforestation
to continue. Beginning in the summer of 0 5 , in less than a year, more
than two million acres were deforested in Brazil. In neighboring Bolivia,
deforestation shot up by more than 80 percent in a decade.
My misstep was accepting the moratorium at face value. I wanted
to believe the publicity that this was a promising new trend. I never
bothered with confirming the results. In the midst of endless bad
environmental news, it was natural to want progress. But living and
learning requires vigilance in addition to hope.