Beyond Funding: Aliança da Soja
In Brazil, the Sustainable Soy Alliance is a becoming a member-backed alliance for transparency, finance, and resilient agriculture in the Cerrado. That is harder than it sounds — and more important than it first appears.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships are easy to praise and hard to keep alive. They bring companies, farmers, public actors, civil society and technical partners to one table. They create space for dialogue where differing or unknown interests can meet. They help translate broad sustainability goals into practical work. But many of them face the same problem: once project funding ends, the meetings stop, coordination weakens and the partnership slowly disappears.
The Sustainable Soy Alliance in Brazil is trying to take a different route.
What began as a seminar evolved into a regular dialogue and was called “Initiative on Sustainable Soy Dialogues for the Itaqui Corridor”. It ultimately led to the founding of a broader alliance promoting sustainable soy production. The change of name reflects a larger membership, a wider agenda and a stronger role in debates that reach beyond one corridor. Today, the Alliance brings together around 70 members from the soy supply chain, including private-sector companies, sector organisations, civil society and technical partners. It is guided by a coordination group with Corredor Logistica e Infraestrutura S.A.(CLI) and Round Table of Responsible Soy (RTRS), Imaflora and GIZ. An executive secretariat supports the day-to-day work.
The Alliance deals with questions that matter in the Cerrado and far beyond it: regenerative, resilient agriculture, traceability, technical assistance, financing and the role of traditional communities in soy-producing territories. These topics decide whether sustainability remains a slide in a presentation or becomes part of how soy is produced, financed, transported, and traded.
Porto do Itaqui - A multi-cargo port
Porto do Itaqui is a multi-cargo port serving the Itaqui Corridor, handling soy, maize, fertilizers, fuels, gas, aluminum, and pulp. It connects Cerrado production areas with international markets and is the key export hub for agricultural goods from Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and parts of Bahia (MATOPIBA). With its important role in soy exports, it sits at the intersection of the Alliance’s work, be it traceability, financing, or practical supply chain governance.
In September 2025, the fourth Sustainable Soy Seminar took place in Chapadinha in the State of Maranhao. Producers from the Brazilian Cerrado met for panel discussions and a field visit. The main topics included regenerative agriculture technologies, financing mechanisms for sustainability and transparency in soy production. The event led to a joint letter addressed to governments, producers, companies and service providers. It set out recommendations on environmental regularization, regenerative practices, technical assistance, traceability, financing and support for traditional communities living in soy-producing territories of the Cerrado. Overall, the letter recommends scaling up regenerative production, strengthening transparency and socio-environmental compliance, and improving access to finance that rewards sustainable practices.
Carta de Chapadinha - The joint letter
Partners who signed the Joint Letter:
- ABIOVE - Associação Brasileira das Indústrias de Óleos Vegetais
- Agrocomply - Consultoria e Soluções em Sustentabilidade
- Amsel & Ara
- CLI - Corredor Logística e Infraestrutura
- CPI Global - Climate Policy Initiative
- Fazenda Barbosa
- Fazenda Pitombeira
- FAU Agricultura e Meio Ambiente
- GIZ - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
- IMAFLORA - Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola
- ProTerra Foundation
- R5 - Agência de Inovação e Desenvolvimento do Cerrado Sul Maranhense
- UFMA - Universidade Federal do Maranhão
- Veros - Soluções em Sustentabilidade
A few months later, in São Paulo, the Alliance hosted Coffee with Business Leaders. Representatives from companies, financial institutions and sector organisations discussed how to strengthen the platform as it moves towards greater independence. Participants included ABIOVE, ANEC, ADM Brazil, Syngenta, Carrefour Group, Santander, BTG Pactual, Banco do Nordeste and Agrotools, among others. The meeting marked an important step towards a more stable structure for the 2026–2027 cycle.
The decisive point is what happens next. In April 2026, CLI began supporting the coordination of the Alliance with funding. This means that the institutional and financial basis of the platform will not depend only on the GIZ in Brazil after the end of the current project phase.
That matters because it is one of the hardest tests for any multi-stakeholder partnership. A partnership becomes credible when its members see enough value to carry it themselves. Not because a donor asks them to attend. Not because a project organises the next meeting. But because the platform helps them solve problems they cannot solve alone.
For companies, this can mean better dialogue on traceability, financing and market expectations. For producers, it can mean access to exchange on practical knowledge and financing and a stronger voice in debates about sustainability. For civil society and technical partners, it can mean a space to raise social and environmental concerns before decisions are already made. For banks it can mean understanding farmer’s needs. For the region, it can mean that sustainability is discussed with a broad group of stakeholders, in places where the supply chain actually operates.
Keeping the partnership alive is hard work. The Alliance will always need to balance different interests. It will need clear governance. It will need to show why coordination is worth paying for. It will also need to make sure that the voices of traditional communities and local actors are not crowded out by larger organisations.
The direction is important. The Sustainable Soy Alliance shows that sustainability in agricultural supply chains is not only about better practices on farms. It is also about the institutions that keep people talking, negotiating and acting together after external project support ends.
That is the quiet success here.
Learn more about the Sustainable Soy Alliance and SASI’s work on sustainable agricultural supply chains: