Four hundred of the biggest food companies in the U.S. and Europe have pledged not to buy from suppliers responsible for deforestation. But no one can say for sure whether their promises are actually protecting forests, according to a report from Climate Focus.
Many of the world’s forests are being cleared to make way for cattle ranches and crops like soy beans and palm oil. But if “a company only says, for example, ‘We procure certified palm oil if it is available,’ but doesn’t help the producers make that supply available, then it is a relatively easy way out,” says Charlotte Streck, director of Climate Focus. Streck is co-author of the report, which calls on companies to offer farmers financial and technical assistance to make it easier for them to grow food sustainably.
The greater issue, however, is that most food-manufacturing companies don’t actually know which farms supply their raw goods. “Very few big food companies can trace their palm oil back to particular plots of land. They just know which mill processed the palm fruit into oil,” says NPR.
And it’s not clear whether the companies that have signed no-deforestation pledges represent a large enough chunk of the world market to make a difference. “Companies with headquarters in Europe or North America account for about 90 percent of the corporate anti-deforestation commitments,” says NPR. “Those companies are major players in the palm-oil trade, but not in beef production in the deforestation hot spots of Brazil.” Eighty percent of Latin American beef is consumed in Latin America, so pressure from European and North American consumers to raise beef more sustainably isn’t likely to drive change.
That’s especially worrisome, says Streck, because beef is “by far the largest driver of deforestation. The carbon footprint of beef related to deforestation is about nine times bigger than palm oil.”