At the end of last month, some of the world’s most powerful companies took a first step towards saving the Amazon rainforest from the ravages of soya cultivation. An unlikely union of Greenpeace, McDonald’s and leading United Kingdom supermarkets successfully pressured multinational United States-based commodities brokers into signing a two-year moratorium on buying soya from newly deforested land in the Amazon.
I cannot say it came naturally to Greenpeace to jump into bed with the world’s largest fast-food company. But it is a fact that the company immediately recognised the nature of the problem and sought not simply to put its own house in order, but to use its might to push a multimillion-dollar industry towards a more sustainable future. For that, McDonald’s European executives must be congratulated.
Home to at least 30% of the world’s land-based animal and plant species, and 220Â 000 Âpeople from 180 indigenous nations, the Amazon rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Yet, in recent times, an area the size of a football pitch is cleared every 10 seconds. Soya is becoming the prime driver of this deforestation as the crop is used increasingly to feed chickens, pigs and cows for meat products, including, until recently, Chicken McNuggets.
We conducted a three-year investigation into the trade, uncovering a supply chain that begins with illegal rainforest destruction and ends in the fast food restaurants and supermarkets of Europe. Using satellite images, previously unreleased government documents and undercover monitoring, Greenpeace campaigners for the first time tracked the trade in soya beans from plantation field to fork, in the form of meat reared on the bean. Given McDonald’s slice of the market, it was an obvious starting point for the application of consumer pressure.
We did not expect the speed with which the campaign progressed, and the allies we would make.
McDonald’s quickly agreed to get Amazon soya out of its chicken feed.
But it also formed an alliance with other UK retailers to put pressure on agribusiness interests operating in Brazil to stop destroying the rainforest. Cargill, the world’s largest privately owned company, has led the march of soya across the rainforest frontier. If the big retailers will not touch chicken fed on Amazon soya, went our reasoning, the pressure on such commodities giants to source soya from elsewhere would become irresistible.
Eventually, the alliance of Greenpeace and retailers led to the two-year moratorium. Last week, the agreement was signed in São Paulo. The signatories included the US-based multinationals Cargill, ADM and Bunge, Brazil’s Amaggi group and France-based Dreyfus –between them responsible for most of the Amazon soya market.
Given the scale of the crisis, a two-year moratorium falls far short of what is ultimately needed to protect the rainforest. It is now up to us to ensure there’s no going back on the commitments made. Crucially, we have to close any space that might allow companies to go back in two years’ time in the belief the heat is off.
But the deal demonstrates the influence consumers can have on events thousands of miles away, and the power that can be brought to bear when business is willing to apply its might to the greatest problems faced by our species and our world. — Â