- A new report from Global Witness uncovered a paper trail that ties food giant Cargill to more than 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of deforestation in Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest.
- It’s unclear whether Cargill is intentionally overlooking the connections to soy-driven deforestation or is simply failing to carry out the necessary due diligence.
- The findings also implicate financial institutions that back Cargill, including Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.
Global food giant Cargill has been tied to the destruction of thousands of hectares of dry tropical forest, which were cleared in eastern Bolivia to make room for soy production.
The food distributor purchased soy from farms in the Santa Cruz department where more than 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of the Chiquitano forest have been cleared since 2017 without proper oversight, according to a new report from Global Witness. The company also appears to be preparing to source future soy projects from the area that could put more than three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of forest at risk.
“Our findings cast severe doubt on Cargill’s claims about sustainability, traceability, its operations in Bolivia and its commitments to achieving deforestation-free supply chains,” said Veronica Oakeshott, the forests campaign lead at Global Witness. “It seems Cargill is not even trying to identify the origins of its soy.”
Cargill has been operating in Bolivia since the 1980s and is one of the country’s largest buyers of soy. The country has nearly 1.5 million hectares of soy (3.7 million acres) under cultivation, making it its largest agricultural product.
The company has signed onto international commitments to eliminate deforestation across its entire agricultural supply chain by 2030 and promised to implement policies to enforce production on illegally deforested land. But receipts tracked down by Global Witness show that Cargill purchased soy from Bolivian distributors who had deforested the land illegally, suggesting that the company isn’t doing the monitoring it’s supposed to.
The transactions might have gone completely unreported, Global Witness said, had its investigators not visited the distributors themselves.
Most of the distributors were Mennonite communities, who have become known for their connection to widespread and unregulated deforestation in the country. Satellite data from earlier this year found that Mennonites have cleared over 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of Bolivian forests between 2001 and 2021.
It’s unclear whether Cargill is intentionally overlooking the connections to soy-driven deforestation, the Global Witness report said, or is simply failing to carry out the necessary due diligence. The information on the receipts would help the company meet its traceability goals.
Cargill confirmed to Global Witness that it does business with the five Mennonite communities but insisted they comply with the company’s sustainable soy policies. “We constantly monitor our suppliers and can confirm that the Mennonite communities in question are in compliance,” it said.
The Chiquitano forest spans more than 23 million hectares (57 million acres) and is considered an important ecological “transition zone” between the Amazon rainforest and the Chaco forest. The International Union for Conservation of Nature included the Chiquitano forest in a declaration making tropical dry forests in South America a conservation priority.
Several financial institutions that have provided billions of dollars of backing for Cargill have committed to reducing or eliminating their relationships with businesses that contribute to deforestation. Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and HSBC have a $6 billion revolving credit facility for the company.
The banks declined to comment in detail about the Global Witness report except Deutsche Bank, which said it rejected accusations that it was knowingly financing activities connected to deforestation.
The report urged all financial institutions to “suspend services…until the company can demonstrate a credible plan to meet its zero-deforestation targets and prevent all illegal deforestation in its supply chain.”
It also recommended that Bolivia improve its forestry laws and regulations to create better traceability measures. For the financial sector, it said there should be better due diligence measures to prevent backing of companies with “insufficient deforestation controls.”
“We need new due diligence regulations in global finance centers like the U.K., U.S. and E.U. to stop finance flowing to companies unwilling to stop profit-driven deforestation,” Oakeshott said.
Banner image: The Chiquitano forest in Bolivia. Photo courtesy of Fundación para la Conservación del Bosque Chiquitano/Facebook.
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