Aerial view of a tractor plowing a vast empty field. Between August 2003 and August 2004, Brazil lost more than 26,000 square kilometers of forest - an area larger than Israel and since 1978, over 530,000 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Recently soybeans have become one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Thanks to a new variety of soybean developed by Brazilian scientists to flourish in the rainforest climate, Brazil is on the verge of supplanting the United States as the world's leading exporter of soybeans.