Are Soybeans Causing Deforestation in the Amazon?

According to a piece I discovered on Wikiepedia.com, soy beans are the main 'currency' in Brazil and the demand for soy beans in the US keeps rising. With this rise, farmers are increasing the size of their farms rapidly. Wow. I wonder where Jamba Juice gets their soy beans from! I never liked soy products much, but it's in so many things now days that it's hard to find things that don't contain it.

Here's the excerpt from www.wikiepedia.com.

Causes of Deforestation in the Amazon

The annual rate of deforestation in the Amazon region has continued to increase from 1990 to 2003 because of factors at local, national, and international levels.^[12] Brazil is currently the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States, and as prices for soybeans rise, the soy farmers are pushing northwards into forested areas of the Amazon. As stated in Brazilian legislation, clearing land for crops or fields is considered an ‘effective use’ of land and is the beginning towards land ownership.^[13] Cleared property is also valued 5–10 times more than forested land and for that reason valuable to the owner whose ultimate objective is resale. As stated by Michael Williams,“The people of Brazil have always thought of the Amazon as a communal possession which they felt free to hack, burn, and abandon at will.”^[14] The soy industry is the principal source of foreign currency for Brazil; therefore, the needs of soy farmers have been used to validate many of the controversial transportation projects that are currently developing in the Amazon.^[15] The first two highways: the Belém-Brasília (1958) and the Cuiaba-Porto Velho (1968) were the only federal highways in the Legal Amazon to be paved and passable year-round before the late 1990’s. These two highways are said to be “at the heart of the ‘arc of deforestation’,” which at present is the focal point area of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The Belém-Brasilia highway attracted nearly two million settlers in the first twenty years. The success of the Belém-Brasilia highway in opening up the forest was re-enacted as paved roads continued to be developed unleashing the irrepressible spread of settlement. The completions of the roads were followed by a wave of resettlement and the settlers had a significant effect on the forest.^[16]