Latin America

I just found this article from Global Witness, a great source I've seen repeatedly, which discusses the fact that large communities of Mennonites are razing and shredding the bejesus out of the forests, and growing products it sells to enormous operations like US-based Cargill.

I just stumbled onto it, as I've never looked to find out what they're up to before! (I did see a short time ago that a huge number of them originated in Russia and settled all over South America. They have always sought to be isolated from the governing structures and specifically don't want governments to be able to send their sons to the military.)

From the Global Witness article,

SEPT. 6, 2023

Empty promises: Cargill, soy, banks and the destruction of Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest:

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- snip -

What we discovered

Cargill can be linked to many of the areas identified by Global Witness either directly through its subsidiary Cargill Bolivia, or indirectly through other companies from which other Cargill entities buy soy. Most of the areas visited by our researchers were “colonies” - “colonias” in Bolivian Spanish – owned and farmed by Anabaptist Christian communities called Mennonites, who farm areas sometimes extending for tens of thousands of hectares.

The links between Cargill and these colonies can be proven by receipts bearing the US company’s name that were shown to Global Witness by Mennonites living there and known as “distributors” (“distribuidores”). These small-scale soy industry middlemen work with the farmers, with the seed, pesticide and fertiliser companies, and with the intermediary companies brokering sales to the processing mills and/or exporters and traders like Cargill.



SOURCES: NATURAL EARTH, SENTINEL-2 CLOUDLESS - HTTPS://S2MAPS.EU BY EOX IT SERVICES GMBH (CONTAINS MODIFIED COPERNICUS SENTINEL DATA 2021); HANSEN/UMD/GOOGLE/USGS/NASA, ACCESSED THROUGH GLOBAL FOREST WATCH; YANN LE POLAIN DE WAROUX (2020), HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.5683/SP2/I4FEQZ

These receipts were issued by Cargill’s silos or other storage facilities linked to the company after the soy has been transported there from the point of harvest. Below is an example of one of the receipts seen and photographed by Global Witness in the five colonies. Table 1 summarises our analysis of these receipts. Most of these areas, according to our analysis, have been deemed more suitable for purposes other than intensive farming by a legally-binding regional government’s land-use plan, known as a “Plan de Uso de Suelo” (PLUS).

Cargill confirmed it does business with all five communities identified by Global Witness. It told us: “We constantly monitor our suppliers and can confirm that the Mennonite communities in question are in compliance with our Police on Sustainable Soy [sic].”

The company said it investigates all allegations received and blocks suppliers if policies and commitments are found to have been violated. The company said it has mapped 26 polygons - a type of farm boundary - across the five Mennonite colonies named by Global Witness and based “on this mapping available and on the mass balance methodology, we can infer that the products received from at least four from the five colonies could be produced in the hectares opened before 2017. Just on the case of one of those communities we cannot assure that the grains were produced on lands deforested before 2017. Which does not necessarily mean that this is non-compliant with the local legislation or Cargill commitments.” Cargill says it works with the Bolivian Soy Roundtable to establish “minimum socio environmental criteria for soy origination in the country”.

Big money
Complicit in Cargill’s Bolivia operations are global banks such as Barclays, BNP Paribas, HSBC and Santander, who have provided financial services to the company worth billions of dollars since 2021 according to the Forests and Finance database. For example, last year Cargill issued bonds worth over US$2 billion which were underwritten by BNP Paribas, Barclays, Santander and Bank of America, among others. In 2021 a consortium including Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and HSBC arranged a US$6 billion revolving credit facility for Cargill, while that same year Deutsche Bank was also part of a syndicate that provided a US$1.3 billion corporate loan to the company.

These deals were made despite an increasing number of financial institutions apparently becoming more interested in reducing or ending their portfolios’ exposure to deforestation. One example is BNP Paribas. In 2021 it pledged “not to finance customers producing or buying beef or soybeans from land cleared or converted after 2008 in the Amazon”, and by 2025 to require “full traceability of beef and soy (direct and indirect) channels” for all its customers. BNP Paribas told Global Witness it uses this policy and other systems to “identify, assess and manage the environmental and social risks and impacts of the activities of our clients”, noting “we value the information you provided regarding Bolivia as it will inform the discussions we have with our client.”

Such deals were also made despite countless exposés of Cargill’s links to deforestation over the years, going back at least as far as 2016. Greenpeace’s 2006 report Eating up the Amazon identified the company as one of “three U.S.-based agricultural commodities giants at the heart of the Amazon destruction.” There is no way these banks could convincingly claim they were not aware of the deforestation risks when they decided to service Cargill.

Is Cargill deliberately failing to record the origin of its soy?

These receipts obtained by Global Witness not only link Cargill to soy from Mennonite colony properties where forest has recently been cleared, but they also show that the company is failing to record or request exactly where the soy has been grown when it is deposited at the silos and other storage facilities it owns or rents. This information is needed by Cargill to reach its traceability goals and check if the purchased soy is deforestation-free. If it wasn’t for these receipts being shown to us, it would probably be impossible to connect that soy to the company.

More:
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/empty-promises-cargill-soy/

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A brief Wikipedia report on Mennonites in Bolivia:

The Mennonites in Bolivia are among the most traditional and conservative of all Mennonite denominations in South America. They are mostly Russian Mennonites of Frisian, Flemish, and Prussian descent. As of 2013, there were about 70,000 Mennonites living in Bolivia,[2] that population has grown to around 150,000 as of 2023.[1]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites_in_Bolivia

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They are tearing the bejesus out of the vital forest areas, bigger and bigger profits for themselves, at the expense of the Bolivian people. They're vaporizing the forests, using the exposed land for crops, handing the products over to Cargill, etc., with everyone making out like bandits, along with the Bolivian politicians who pave the way for them, and the environment, life on earth, goes directly into the toilet.

Easy to see there's a lot to investigate ahead for more people like those at Global Witness. I hope to learn more, and I hope something will be done in time.