If you’re attempting to move away from meat and toward a plant-based diet, you might think that soy is just a harmless, green substitute. Actually, not quite. Of the soy grown worldwide, 75% is utilised as animal feed, with almost half of it coming from South America, where it is cultivated on deforested land cleared for vast soy fields.
According to Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of the advocacy organisation Mighty Earth, the soybeans linked to deforestation are finding their way to the feed of the chickens, pigs, and cows that people all over the world eat. “Almost all multinational meat retailers have some sort of supply chain linkage to deforestation.”
Let’s look at Burger King.
By using supply-chain mapping and satellite imagery, Mighty Earth was able to link the massive fast-food business to over a million acres of cleared forest. The global campaign organisation named two of Burger King’s top soy suppliers as the guilty parties in its latest study, “The Ultimate Mystery Meat”: Bunge, a major participant in South America, and Cargill, the largest privately owned firm in the United States.
Hurowitz claimed that deforestation threatens some of the most endangered species in the world and causes something around one-fifth of the world’s total climate pollution.
The impact of soy cultivation and corporate negligence in the Cerrado and beyond
The Cerrado, a 500 million-acre savanna in Brazil, is the starting point for deforestation. Half of it has been destroyed, largely for the cultivation of soy, despite being home to 5% of the world’s biodiversity, which includes endangered species like the giant anteater and jaguar. As a result of decades of conservation efforts, the Amazon, the Cerrado’s more well-known cousin to the north, has had 25% of its ecology destroyed.
In the Cerrado regions where Cargill operates, more than 320,000 acres were removed from the forest between 2011 and 2015; in the regions where Bunge operates, more than 1.4 million acres were cleared. The analysis states that while soy was not the primary cause of deforestation, it accounted for a large portion of it.
In Bolivia, where Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are the main participants, the woods were also impacted. Bolivia, one of the world’s most biodiverse nations, is home to thousands of plant and animal species in its woods, including macaws, pink river dolphins, and three-toed sloths. According to a report referenced by Mighty Earth, Bolivia’s annual pace of deforestation increased to over 700,000 acres between 2010 and 2015.
Burger King has a large portion of the burden, not just the soy traders. The corporation has no real plans to remove deforestation from its supply chain; neither deforestation nor human rights are mentioned on the “Corporate Responsibility” portion of its website. Burger King received a zero last year, far lower than rivals like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, when the Union of Concerned Scientists evaluated the nation’s largest beef suppliers based on their deforestation pledges and policies.
“The tragedy of the continued deforestation for me is it’s entirely avoidable,” Hurowitz states. “There are about 500 million acres of degraded land across Latin America where agriculture can be extended without impacting native ecosystems.”
Soy Moratorium’s success in the Amazon sparks debate on expanding to the Cerrado
When it comes to clearcutting in the Amazon, the Soy Moratorium—a voluntary zero-deforestation pact that was implemented in 2006 and extended indefinitely last year—has actually reduced it to record lows. In the previous year, there was a rise in that rate. However, agricultural output increased even as the Amazon’s deforestation fell.
Strong Earth and other groups argue that the Soy Moratorium benefits all parties involved; they, together with Brazil’s environment minister José Sarney Filho, wish to expand the moratorium to cover the Cerrado.
Following the publication of the report a month ago, Bunge, Cargill, and Burger King have remained silent. Their position on extending the Soy Moratorium to the Cerrado and beyond remains unspoken. The Brazilian soy trade association Abiove, which represents Cargill, Bunge, and other companies, is quoted in the paper as saying that “no crisis justifies a [soy] moratorium in the Cerrado” in October.
Hurowitz calls Cargill’s previous statements opposing deforestation “green-washing”. During the 2014 UN Climate Summit, the company joined the New York Declaration on Forests, which urged the private sector to stop deforestation in the production of agricultural products including soy and palm oil by 2020.
Cargill and Bunge’s controversial timelines and policies under scrutiny
On the contrary, a less audacious objective is stated on Cargill’s website, which states that the corporation aims to completely eradicate deforestation by 2030. According to Hurowitz, 2030 is much too late; if Cargill managed to clear hundreds of thousands of acres in South America in just five years, imagine what it could accomplish in just thirteen.
Concerning deforestation, Bunge appears to have slightly better policies than Cargill, though it’s unclear if these policies have improved Bunge’s behaviour. Although it has allowed itself until “between 2020 and 2025” to totally remove deforestation from its supply chain, it has been collaborating with the Nature Conservancy since 2013 to find appropriate sites for expansion. The Amazon and the Cerrado are the only South American woods mentioned on Bunge’s website as areas where it won’t spread.
Bunge claims that Mighty Earth overstates the possible impact that any of its acts alone could have on South America’s forests and the soy business and that the organisation’s report is misleading.
“Deforestation is a complex issue related to economic development, global market demand, property rights, and a lack of adequate compensation for land owners—from the market or from governments—that would provide incentives to conserve the environment,” a spokesperson wrote.
To manage it, new systems must be created by the government, business, agriculture, civic society, and local communities. Bunge will stay involved in these initiatives actively.
(Tashia Bernardus)