Empty Promises: Cargill, Soybeans, Banking, and the Destruction of the Chiquitano Forest in Bolivia

The findings in this report call into question Cargill’s claims about sustainability, traceability, its operations in Bolivia, and its commitments to ending deforestation in its supply chains around the world. In 2014, it signed the New York Declaration on Forests, which agreed to eliminate “deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities such as palm oil, soybeans, paper, and beef products by no later than 2020.” The company then abandoned that goal and pushed its target to 2030.

However, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 last year, Cargill, along with 13 other companies, launched a “roadmap” that sets a target date in 2025 for deforestation for soybean production in the Amazon, Cerrado, and Chaco. This “road map” has come under fire from civil society and some of Cargill’s largest customers, including McDonald’s, Nestlé, Unilever and Wal-Mart. Chiquitano in Bolivia is not included as a distinct region in the roadmap and therefore does not appear to be included in the 2025 target. By the end of 2023, traders will be required to conduct a global risk assessment to identify other relevant biomes and “develop additional implementation plans and targets as needed,” Which Global Witness recommends include Chiquitano.

With regard to Bolivia in particular, Cargill says it aims to have “the most sustainable food industry supply chains in the world” while its 2021 Sustainability Report claims that traceability in Bolivia is central to its business and that it is committed to “transforming our supply.” For the chain to be free from deforestation, and to protect local forests and plants. This report also claims to be “making good progress in mapping our network of soybean suppliers” in Bolivia, having moved “from mapping using geographic reference points to the more sophisticated methodology of polygon mapping all field boundaries of our direct suppliers.” She adds that it “aims to identify the origins of all our soybeans” throughout South America as a whole.

However, our findings suggest that Cargill is less concerned with deforestation or forest protection in Bolivia, and is more committed to what we might call a “supply chain”. Andtraceability.” It seems that the company is not even attempt To learn about the origins of Bolivian soybeans, not to mention success. Any claims of “good progress” are deceptive.