By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil’s oilseed industry group Abiove said it will only revise the country’s long-standing soy moratorium if the pact receives full legal protection against retroactive liability. The position was outlined by CEO André Nassar in an interview with Broadcast Agro, highlighted by Broadcast, after Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended all ongoing lawsuits involving the agreement.
The decision, issued by Justice Flávio Dino on Wednesday (5), came at Abiove’s request and halted all judicial and administrative actions tied to the moratorium, which was created in 2006 to bar purchases of soy grown on Amazon land cleared after July 2008.
Nassar said the pact cannot remain unchanged amid intensifying litigation. “Someone here really thinks the moratorium will stay exactly as it is with this level of litigation? No. So it will change,” he said. He added that both the Supreme Court and Brazil’s antitrust regulator Cade have already signaled that adjustments are necessary. “Justice Flávio Dino wrote exactly that. So, for us in the industry, that is a very clear signal,” he said.
Dino’s ruling froze three fronts of dispute: Cade’s investigation into alleged information-sharing among trading companies, a multibillion-real lawsuit by the Mato Grosso soybean and corn growers’ association Aprosoja-MT, and the constitutional review of state law 12.709/2024, which bans tax incentives for companies participating in the moratorium starting Thursday (1), January 2026.
Abiove sought to consolidate the litigation in one venue, Nassar said. “We understood that the decision would guide the Cade debate. But the Cade process didn’t move in the linear way we expected,” he said, noting that Cade opened a new probe on Sunday (3) as the Supreme Court was moving toward upholding the Mato Grosso law.
Nassar said the industry’s top concern is shielding the agreement’s 19-year history. “We will not change a moratorium under the risk that its past could be condemned,” he said, rejecting claims that the pact generated widespread harm to producers. “This idea of condemning the past of the moratorium is something producers are constructing. It’s not true. You can say it caused losses for some producers, but what did it do for soy? And for the entire market it created for soy?”
The group maintains ongoing discussions with the federal government, the federal prosecutor’s office and environmental NGOs. Talks with growers, however, remain tense. “We have a lot of difficulty negotiating with producers because every conversation ends with compensation demands on the table,” Nassar said.
He added that the national farm lobby CNA, which asked the Supreme Court to overturn Dino’s injunction, is likely to remain aligned with Aprosoja-MT to preserve the legal strategy behind the compensation lawsuit.
The 2026 enforcement of the Mato Grosso law is emerging as a turning point for the pact, Nassar said. “Each company will have to make a decision early next year. It will become a commercial decision for each company,” he said, adding that some trading houses may withdraw. “If that will kill the moratorium, I don’t know, because some may leave and others may not.”
Responding to cartel allegations, he denied any collusion. “Discussion about price or production volume of each farmer — none of that happens there,” he said, describing the pact as limited to environmental compliance checks shared with NGOs and public agencies.
Nassar also rejected claims that the moratorium imposes stricter rules than Brazil’s Forest Code. He said legislation sets minimum requirements but does not restrict companies from adopting stronger voluntary standards. Internal Abiove data show that most farms blocked by the pact fail to fully comply with the law.
He said the moratorium has become a political flashpoint, especially in Mato Grosso, and the debate is likely to intensify as Brazil moves toward the 2026 elections, shaping the agreement’s future and the market behavior of major grain traders such as Bunge Ltd. (BG), Cargill Inc., Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM) and Louis Dreyfus Co.
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