cargillquestions

What would it take for huge agricultural commodities traders like Cargill to stop buying and selling soy produced from illegal deforestation?

Genuine question, not just soapboxing I'm keen to know from your perspective what solutions actually look like.

These initiatives tend to be incredibly small in relation to the scale of the deforestation issue though as you're aware, and in many of the key sourcing regions it's 95%+ of the product being sourced from illegal deforestation with Cargill (yourself, previously) making a huge profit from this commodity.

It is entirely feasible for traders to enforce full traceability and moratoria on illegally deforested soy, but there is currently a significant economic incentive not to. Can I ask again what do you think it would take to overcome this?

Understand if you don't actually want to answer and upset friends and contacts but did hope this was an actual AMA more than an industry figleaf.

Yes RSPO segregated palm oil is one example where traders have, after considerable pressure, sold a traceable commodity, albeit alongside deforestation driving oil.

Are you suggesting then that the answer is for segregated sustainable soy?

Go on, I'll answer this if OP won't, not a campaigner but I do work in the food and agriculture sector and have a big interest in this topic and sifting through the bullshit

Big Food is currently betting on regenerative agriculture as something of a silver bullet; lower inputs, higher yields, greater soil resilience and theoretical increased soil carbon stocks avoiding some of those pesky obligations under government net zero commitments.

• Internally.. if it's profitable and protects our future livelihoods, try it and see if it scales. Protects our social license to operate in the meantime.

• Externally.. we're producing food in ancient ways updated for modern times, here's your burger in balance with nature etc etc

Personally I think lots of the practices are sound, historically tested and sensible (crop rotations! not ruining soil!) but there's a lot of thought and effort being expended in data, monitoring and technology when the systemic fundamentals are still kinda fucked

We've consolidated food production in the hands of large corporations who want to apply a relatively homogeneous template to intensely produce lots of very similar food for lots of people across the world in a very profitable way.

A more sensible future should include protecting soil and reducing inputs but it also means adapting what we all eat, decentralising food production, reintroducing variety and giving a producers a fair share of income and the agency to adapt to a volatile growing climate that's already properly fucked in parts of the world and rapidly getting more fucked and fast

To answer your question, there's some positive in that large food businesses do recognise now that you can save money and the planet too in theory, but real change doesn't come from the people who benefit the most from things staying as they are.

More specifically, Cargill et al as profit making entities have most of the power but fuck all incentive to end deforestation and its contribution to climate change.

/rant

Cargill Responsible Soy Fund, $30 million. Which sounds amazing until you check the notes and their profit (not revenue) is currently $6.7 BILLION annually. So, 0.4% of one year's profit. It's the same deal as the oil companies "investing for a sustainable energy future".