Amazon rainforest major threat to the Amazon rainforest. The highway still has not been completed, limiting the environmental damage. Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from , with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture. Currently, Brazil is the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States. New research however, conducted by Leydimere Oliveira et al., has shown that the more rainforest is logged in the Amazon, the less precipitation
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest not purchase soybeans produced in the Brazilian Amazon in recently deforested areas. Before the moratorium, 30 percent of soy field expansion had occurred through deforestation, contributing to record deforestation rates. After eight years of the moratorium, a 2015 study found that although soy production area had expanded another 1.3 million hectares, only about 1 percent of the new soy expansion had come at the expense of forest. In response to the moratorium, farmers were choosing to plant on already cleared land. The needs of soy farmers have been used to validate some controversial transportation projects that have developed in the