The multinational food company Cargill announced that its supply chains in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay will be deforestation and conversion free by 2025.
Sounds great? At first sight, it does indeed especially as Cargill does not only aim to avoid deforestation but generally land conversion linked to its supply chains. This evades the issue that instead of causing deforestation, certain land uses are frequently moved to other non-forest ecosystems, which results in deforestation-free supply chains but with similarly bad consequences for other ecosystems instead. Therefore, the aim should be deforestation- and conversion-free supply chain.
On the other hand, conservation groups like Mighty Earth point out that these commitments are not ambitious enough to meet global climate goals and further leave out countries like Bolivia, Paraguay, or Colombia where deforestation due to large-scale agricultural activities continues to increase. Mighty Earth also questions why nature cannot be protected immediately, when Cargill is apparently so occupied with the protection of critical ecosystems. Cargill holds against it that they have commitments for the other South American countries for 2030, that they are working to achieve conversion-free supply chains in the shortest time possible and that things just take time.
Moreover, even setting a data such as 2025 that does not seem too distant, this still means that producers are allowed to continue to deforest for another 18 months. At worst, this announcement could lead to increased deforestation activities before 2025. This is why Mighty Earth for example advocates for setting 2020 as the cut-off date, which means Cargill would be required to purchase commodities from producers working on land that has at least been cut before 2020.
There have been several cases uncovered e.g. by Global Witness, in which Cargill was found to have purchased soy from suppliers who cleared forests, e.g. in the dry Chiquitano forest in Bolivia, an important ecosystem in between the Amazon rainforest and the Chaco Forest.
Moreover, Cargill has been linked to the clearance of 66,000 hectares of land in Brazilian forests within only one year (March 2019 to March 2020) based on the data from Mighty Earth. This corresponds to an area larger than Oslo.
Another case was reported last year (2022) by Earthsight who uncovered that Cargill (and Bunge) sourced some of the soy they use in animal food from land from which indigenous communities have been displaced.
Many companies, like e.g. Norwegian salmon producers, purchase feed from Cargill’s subsidiary company Cargill Aqua Nutrition. Therefore, Cargill’s activities play a crucial role for achieving commitments regarding deforestation and conversion free supply chains that those Norwegian companies may have.
Even with the new commitments we should continue to keep a watchful eye on Cargill.
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