Activists protest CEO of Cargill -- 'worst company in the world' -- at his Edina home

Minnesota-based agricultural giant Cargill vows to end deforestation in its supply chain. It’s just unclear how long they'll take to do it.

Cargill, which trades in agricultural commodities like soybeans, buys from farmers all over the world, including the ones razing forests to make way for farm fields. This is especially troubling in Brazil, simultaneously the world’s top exporter of soybeans and home to most of the Amazon rainforest. Slash-and-burn farming in Brazil has already destroyed a fifth of the Amazon. Last year, it contributed to wildfires that consumed 2.2 million acres.

In 2014, Cargill signed on to the United Nations' New York Declaration on Forests, pledging to stop purchasing products grown on deforested land by the end of 2020. That deadline is just around the corner, and the company’s not going to make it. Last year, after receiving corporate sustainability awards and conciliatory praise from environmental groups, Cargill announced it would actually give itself until 2030 to stop sourcing from deforesters. By then, more than half of the Amazon would be lost, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

In addition to farms in the Amazon, Cargill also buys soy from farmers who are rapidly clearing another massive Brazilian biome of woodlands and savannah called the Cerrado, which has already been reduced by half. In 2017, dozens of Brazilian and international brands signed an agreement, the Cerrado Manifesto, to halt deforestation in the region.

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