Commodity-trading giant Cargill recently signaled that it will weaken its no-deforestation commitments in the Amazon Rainforest, an investigation by Repórter Brasil has revealed.
In its latest sustainability report, released in December 2024, Cargill changed how it measures deforestation in its soy supply chain. It had initially committed to following the guidelines of the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a voluntary industry initiative that bans the trade in soy grown on land that was deforested after 2008.
But now Cargill has established 2020 as the cutoff year. That’s the same year set by the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR): When it goes into effect at the end of 2025, the EUDR will prohibit the imports into the EU of products grown on land deforested since 2020.
This shift allows Cargill, the largest exporter of grains out of Brazil, to claim that 99.3% of its soy is “deforestation-free.” Under the 2008 cutoff, this proportion would have been 94%.
“By ignoring the [soy] moratorium, Cargill gains permission to buy soy from millions of hectares deforested after 2008, benefiting large agribusiness players pushing to end the agreement,” Tiago Reis, a conservation specialist at WWF-Brazil, one of the NGOs that signed the moratorium, told Repórter Brasil.
The Amazon Soy Moratorium has been largely successful since its adoption by traders in 2006. That year, 30% of newly expanded soy farms were established on deforested land. By 2013, it was just 1%.
If other industry players follow Cargill’s lead and abandon their Amazon Soy Moratorium commitments, an extra 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of land in the Amazon could be used for soy production.
In an emailed statement to Mongabay, the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, Abiove, an industry association of which Cargill is a member, said, “Abiove and its member companies are strong supporters of the Soy Moratorium and its undeniable positive legacy.” Abiove acknowledged Cargill’s shift away from the Amazon Soy Moratorium but blamed it on pressure from recently passed state laws.
In the past six months, three of Brazil’s Amazonian states — Rondônia, Mato Grosso and Maranhão — passed laws scrapping tax incentives for companies that adhere to the Amazon Soy Moratorium. Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court suspended the Mato Grosso law from going into effect until its constitutionality can be established.
In December 2024, the Mato Grosso chapter of Aprosoja, a soy industry lobby group, petitioned the country’s antitrust authorities to ban the Amazon Soy Moratorium. It argued that the moratorium creates a “purchasing cartel” that imposes restrictions beyond Brazilian law and costs the state 20 billion reais ($3.5 billion) in annual losses.
Banner image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.
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