Ending Deforestation
Cargill is committed to protecting forests and ensuring deforestation-free supply chains
Forests are crucial to life on the planet. They support four-fifths of terrestrial plant and animal life, and capture and store greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Forests also provide food, water, fuel, medicine and livelihoods to billions of people.
Cargill has pledged to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate deforestation from our agricultural supply chains. We recognize that forests and farming are both critical to creating a more sustainable, food-secure future.
Forest protection in Brazil and Bolivia
Cargill’s commitment is to end deforestation in our agricultural supply chains. Cargill was the only agricultural commodities company to endorse the New York Declaration on Forests in 2014 and we are committed to delivering against global and private-sector targets to protect forests. We work alongside a number of organizations who share our goal of ending deforestation. Some are critical, some are supportive; but in all cases, we benefit from these interactions as we work toward a common purpose.
We have a proven track record protecting forests and are proud of our progress. Yet we know we have more work to do. Recent reports highlight some of the hurdles on this journey, particularly in Brazil and Bolivia.
- In the Amazon, we have seen great progress since we partnered to implement the Soy Moratorium in 2006. The Moratorium has contributed to an 80 percent decline in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and has been extended indefinitely. At the same time, we are working with partners to implement Brazil’s Forest Code across the region.
- In the Cerrado of Brazil, we are advancing sustainable solutions in partnership with industry, NGOs, governments and the Cerrado Working Group, which was formed out of the Amazon Soy Moratorium Working Group. Across Brazil, we are working with more than 15,000 soy farmers and collaborating with governments, NGOs and partners to implement the Brazilian Forest Code and advance forest protection.
- In Bolivia, we are applying our experience from other regions and evaluating our sourcing to ensure we are aligned with our commitments.
Our work on deforestation is also connected to our goals of increasing food security and improving farmer livelihoods, which is why we are being thoughtful about our approaches and timetables. We are advancing sustainability while partnering with governments and farmers as they make decisions about how to steward their land. Addressing this global challenge requires both ambition and pragmatism as we work farm by farm and hectare by hectare.
As outlined in our 2017 Cargill Report on Forests, we are pressing forward with a focus on nourishing the world and protecting the planet.
Our actions
Cargill uses its insights as one of the world’s largest buyers of soy, palm oil, and other crops to promote sustainable agriculture. 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:
- We’ve worked with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) since 2004 to use satellite technology to monitor and manage deforestation linked to our supply chains.
- 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 on sustainable palm oil since joining the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004. We issued a palm oil policy in 2014 to go a step further and eliminate any palm oil source from our supply chain that is linked to deforestation of environmentally sensitive areas including peatlands or is exploitative of indigenous communities. We release regular progress reports on our efforts.
- At the United Nations’ Climate Summit in 2014 we pledged to reduce and eventually end deforestation across our entire agricultural supply chain, with the goal of halving it by 2020 and ending it completely by 2030.
- We released a global policy on forests and detailed action plans for priority supply chains in September 2015 to share the actions we would take to halve deforestation in our supply chains by 2020 and eliminate it by 2030. It includes principles and an approach for evaluating our suppliers and our investments, based on forest protection principles.
- We released our first Report on Forests in January 2017 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. The report covers the challenges we face and new approaches we can take to maintain progress, from building consensus around definitions and standards of measurement to coordinating within and across sectors to promote sustainable landscape approaches.