Ending Deforestation

Cargill is committed to protecting forests and ending deforestation, while respecting people and human rights.

Forests play a critical role in mitigating climate change, avoiding erosion and increasing biodiversity. However, many of the world’s tropical forests are at risk and urgent action is needed. At the same time, many producer communities who are engaged in nearby farming, are struggling to secure a stable livelihood.

Cargill has pledged to eliminate deforestation from our agricultural supply chains. We believe forests and farming can and must coexist in order to sustain the health of people and our planet.

We are committed to working in partnership with our suppliers, customers, NGOs and governments to innovate and scale real solutions. We recognize the science-based evidence, such as the October 2018 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), demonstrates that targeted and swift action is needed. We won’t wait until 2030 to deliver – we’re taking action today.

Our actions

We’re working to transform our entire agricultural supply chain to be free of deforestation through prioritized policies and time-bound action plans. Looking beyond our own supply chain, we also are taking a leading role in making the entire industry more sustainable. Here are some ways we are accelerating our actions:

Enhancing traceability

We are committed to 100% cocoa bean traceability and no further conversion of any forest land in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
In collaboration with the World Resources Institute, we have assessed more than 2.3 million hectares of land within our cocoa sourcing footprint, using GPS technology to evaluate habitat types and tree cover loss.

Investing in Monitoring

In collaboration with World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch, Cargill invests in satellite mapping and radar technology. Global Forest Watch Pro, will provide a management system to monitor deforestation in our palm supply chain with the support of satellite imageries.
Leveraging technology, including drones, to monitor land use change on the ground as well as inspect tree health or gather agronomic data that will help manage the plantations more effectively.

Advocating for Transformation

We encourage the industry to join together pre-competitively in support of multi-stakeholder efforts to address deforestation on landscape level interventions, such as Proforest’s pilot program we support in Siak and Pelalawan Districts of Riau in Indonesia.
Through our role in the Cerrado Working Group (GTC), we’re helping facilitate conversations to identify the right programs and policies for the region based on local environmental, social and economic conditions.

Learn more about our approach to protecting forests, our principles and examples of proactive steps we are taking to eliminate deforestation in our cocoa, palm oil and soy supply chains.

Our progress

For over a decade, Cargill has been tackling deforestation in our supply chains. We work with farmers, governments, environmental organizations and members of the communities in which we operate to find practical and scalable solutions. Here’s some of our progress so far:

In 2018, Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate outlined its plan to eliminate deforestation from its cocoa supply chain. The Protect our Planet plan provides concrete actions the company is taking to achieve 100 percent cocoa bean traceability, and includes a commitment of “no further conversion” of any forest land in Ghana and Ivory Coast for production.
In 2018, Cargill established a Forest and Land Use Steering team to ensure executive-level engagement in the development of an integrated approach to forest protection across priority supply chains.
In 2017, we also released our first Report on Forests to describe the progress we are making on our action plans to protect forests and promote sustainable land use in our cocoa, soy, palm oil, cotton, maize and fiber-based packaging supply chains.
In 2016, we worked with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to develop a global deforestation baseline for four regions of our priority deforestation-risk commodities: soy in Brazil and Paraguay, palm oil globally, and cocoa globally.
In 2015, we established our first global Policy on Forests. We also released detailed action plans for priority supply chains, including principles and an approach for evaluating our suppliers and our investments based on forest protection principles.
In 2014, we were the only global agricultural commodities company to endorse the New York Declaration on Forests, which we remain committed to delivering.
In 2014, we also issued our palm oil policy. We’ve worked on sustainable palm oil since joining the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004. The 2014 policy went a step further to eliminate any palm oil sourced from our supply chain that is linked to deforestation of environmentally sensitive areas including peatlands or is exploitative of indigenous communities.
Since 2006, Cargill has partnered with industry and environmental organizations to uphold the Brazilian Soy Moratorium in the Amazon – a voluntary agreement to not purchase soy from lands in the Amazon biome that were deforested after July 2006 – that has contributed to the 80 percent decline in deforestation in the Amazon in the last decade. The Moratorium was extended indefinitely in 2016.
We’ve worked with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) since 2004 to use satellite technology to monitor and manage deforestation linked to our supply chains.

Learn more

6 Ways Cargill is protecting forests in its cocoa supply chain

[Middle East & Africa]/[Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana]