Agro giant Cargill tied to deforestation in Bolivia's Chiquitano forest

[Judi Lynn]

by Maxwell Radwin on 11 September 2023

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.



Deforestation in the Chiquitano forest in Bolivia. Photo courtesy of Fundación para la Conservación del Bosque Chiquitano/Facebook.

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/agro-giant-cargill-tied-to-deforestation-in-bolivias-chiquitano-forest

~ ~ ~

Cargill Wikipedia:

Cargill, Incorporated, is an American global food corporation based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware.[5][6][7] Founded in 1865, it is the largest privately held company in the United States in terms of revenue.[4]

Some of Cargill's major businesses are trading, purchasing and distributing grain and other agricultural commodities, such as palm oil; trading in energy, steel and transport; raising livestock and production of feed; and producing food ingredients such as starch and glucose syrup, vegetable oils and fats for application in processed foods and industrial use. Cargill also has a large financial services arm, which manages financial risks in the commodity markets for the company. In 2003, it split off a portion of its financial operations into Black River Asset Management, a hedge fund with about $10 billion of assets and liabilities. It previously owned two-thirds of the shares of The Mosaic Company (sold off in 2011), one of the world's leading producers and marketers of concentrated phosphate and potash crop nutrients.

Cargill reported gross revenues of $165 billion in 2022.[8] It last reported net profit earnings in 2021, of just below $5 billion.[9] Employing over 155,000 employees[10] in 66 countries, it is responsible for 25% of all United States grain exports. The company also supplies about 22% of the US domestic meat market, importing more products from Argentina than any other company, and is the largest poultry producer in Thailand. All the eggs used in US McDonald's restaurants pass through Cargill's plants.[11] It is the only US producer of Alberger process salt, which is used in the fast-food and prepared food industries.

Cargill remains a family-owned business, as the descendants of the founder (from the Cargill and MacMillan families) own over 90% of it.[12] In January 2023, Brian Sikes was appointed to serve as president and CEO. He is the 10th CEO in Cargill's 158-year history.

Child trafficking
In 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Cargill, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland in federal court on behalf of children who said they were trafficked from Mali into Côte d'Ivoire and forced to work on cocoa bean plantations 12 to 14 hours a day with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent physical abuse.[76]

. . .

Child labor in Uzbekistan
Cargill was a major buyer of cotton in Uzbekistan, despite the industry prevalence of uncompensated workers and possible human rights abuses, and admissions by two representatives that the company is aware of the possible use of child labor in the production of its crops. Their concerns have been public since 2005, but no action has been taken on labor violations in Cargill's Uzbek operations.[80] The company has not traded any Uzbek cotton in several years.[citation needed]

Union busting
In February 2018, several employees of Cargill's Dayton, Virginia plant held protests. Their grievances included poor health benefits, bad working conditions, and Cargill's allegedly firing employees who organized to create a union.[81] The protests led to nine people's arrest for trespassing on company property.[82]

Worker safety during COVID-19
During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, a single meat processing plant in High River, Canada, was linked to over 358 cases[52] of infection. United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union Local 401 president Thomas Hesse said, "It's a tragedy. We asked days and days ago for that plant to be closed temporarily for two weeks, send all of the workers home with pay to isolate. That was when we were aware of 38 cases. That was before they set up a dedicated testing facility in the area." Reports of employees being denied personal protective equipment also surfaced around the same period.[83] As of May 3, 2020, 917 of the plant's 2,000 workers had tested positive, and the plant was linked to 1,501 total cases.[84]

Land grabbing
The NGO Oxfam has documented an illustrative case of land grabbing. Between 2010 and 2012 Cargill brought huge areas of land in Colombia under its control despite legal restrictions on the acquisition of state land. To accomplish this, Cargill set up no fewer than 36 mailbox companies, which enabled it to exceed the legally prescribed maximum size of land ownership. With more than 50,000 hectares of land, Cargill thus acquired more than 30 times the land legally permitted for a single owner.[85][86]

. . .

Criticism
Main article: Criticisms of Cargill
As a private company, Cargill is not required to release the same amount of information as a publicly traded company and, as a business practice, keeps a relatively low profile.[12][13]

In 2019 the NGO Mighty Earth released a 56-page report on Cargill. Mighty Earth chair and former U.S. Congressman Henry A. Waxman called Cargill "the worst company in the world" and said it drives "the most important problems facing our world" (deforestation, pollution, climate change, exploitation) "at a scale that dwarfs their closest competitors."[72][73][74]

More, and more, and more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill

(Of course you would remember Waxman was a Democrat. What a shame he's gone. He was hard-working, and principled.)