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Soybean Exporters in Greenpeace's Sights |
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By Stephen Leahy*
The
international environmental group blames Cargill and other agricultural
multinational corporations for deforestation in the Amazon, and
charges that construction of new highways, like BR-163, will encourage
more logging to clear land for soybean fields.
TORONTO - Financed by huge U.S. agribusiness
corporations like Cargill, soybean farming is now one of the primary
drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, charge activists
from the environmental watchdog group Greenpeace, which is leading
an international campaign against unregulated, unsustainable soya
cultivation.
Greenpeace and other green groups oppose the construction of roads,
railways and canals for transporting soya to ports like Cargill's
Santarem on the Amazon River.
The controversy intensified with the Brazilian government's announcement
on Jun. 5 that it will pave the Amazon highway BR-163, which, extending
1,700 km, will link Santarem with the southern state of Mato Grosso
and provide a quick export route for the output of soybean farms.
"The Amazon is one of the most biodiverse areas on Earth and we
need it for stabilizing the planet's climate, but this company (Cargill)
is trashing the rainforest to grow soya to feed Europe's farm animals,"
said Thomas Henningsen, Greenpeace Amazon campaign coordinator in
a statement.
Greenpeace activists shut down Cargill's main European soya export
facility in the Amazon and blocked Cargill-owned facilities in Britain
and France in a series of protests from May 19 to 22 over the company's
role in the destruction of 1.2 million hectares of rainforest to
grow soybeans.
Much of the money to finance soybean farming comes from outside
of Brazil. Cargill and two other agribusiness giants, ADM (Archer
Daniels Midland) and Bunge, are responsible for 60 percent of the
financial investments in soya production in Brazil, according to
the Greenpeace investigative report "Eating Up the Amazon". Those
three companies also control nearly 80 percent of the European Union's
soybean processing.
Cargill also owns Sun Valley, a French poultry operation that supplies
millions of chickens to supermarkets and fast food restaurants across
Europe. The chickens are fed soymeal, illegally grown in the Amazon,
according to Greenpeace.
The group also documents a number of large soybean farms supplying
Cargill that it says are "linked to the use of slave labor, illegal
land grabbing and massive deforestation."
Brazil has become the second largest soybean producer, after the
United States, providing more than 30 percent of the world's crop
-- an estimated 57.4 million tons in the 2005-2006 period alone.
Cargill acknowledges the importance of the Amazon but rejects Greenpeace's
demand to prohibit commercial agriculture in the region, said Afonso
Champi, Cargill's Public Affairs director in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Based in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota, Cargill is one of
the world's largest private companies, with 71 billion dollars in
sales revenues last year. "Starting with the next crop, we will
only purchase soya from producers who are in compliance with Brazil's
Forest Code," Champi said in a Tierramérica interview. Under that
code, 80 percent of the forest must be maintained.
Cargill has formed an alliance with the Nature Conservancy, U.S.-based
NGO to help landowners comply with that rule, he said.
"Brazil has good environmental laws, but very poor enforcement of
those laws," Bill Laurance, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institution, in Balboa, Panama.
"Deforestation has been the worst ever in the past few years, with
2 to 2.4 million hectares falling annually," Laurance told Tierramérica.
Brazil is the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which
contribute to climate change, mainly due to deforestation in the
Amazon, according to Greenpeace. Experts agree there is little doubt
that soya farming is responsible for deforestation in the Amazon
Soybean fields are found mainly in the grassland areas of the Amazon
region and on former cattle ranches, says Laurance. After selling
their land, cattle ranchers often move on and deforest new areas
to continue ranching.
In reaction to the announcement of the construction of new roads,
he warned that "huge swaths of unbroken forest will be opened up.
It's almost an invitation to logging and land speculation."
But the administration of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva assures
that paving the BR-163 Amazon highway will not foment deforestation
because a sustainability plan is in place that ensures enforcement
of environmental regulations.
According to Adalberto Verissimo, researcher at the Institute of
Man and Environment of the Amazon, the so-called "green highway",
which will be complete in two or three years at a cost of 450 million
dollars, depends on the success of an "economy of standing forests"
in obtaining support of a strong portion of the market.
"It's impossible to maintain control only through government inspection,"
he said.
Laurance says huge foreign debt payments are driving this export
of soybeans. "Brazil is desperate for exports to keep its head above
water," and that gives the soya lobby enormous political influence
regionally and nationally, he said.
According to Greenpeace, it wouldn't be a surprise if multinational
corporations like Cargill provide some of the financing for paving
highway BR-163.
* Stephen Leahy is a Tierramérica contributor.
With reporting by Mario Osava in Brazil.
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