2015
In a Report by Greenomics Indonesia, Cargill is found to be purchasing palm oil linked to deforestation in Papua New Guinea.
2016
Cargill abandons a no-deforestation private agreement in Indonesia, saying the government’s recent efforts to strengthen its certification standards were sufficient.
2017
In a report by Mighty Earth, Cargill found to be one of the two largest customers of industrial-scale deforestation in Bolivia. Months after the deforestation was exposed, investigators re-visited the sites and found Cargill still driving deforestation. Between Cargill and Bunge, they had cleared the equivalent of 10,000 football fields for soy.
In a report by Mighty Earth, Cargill is found to help drive the destruction of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire’s forests— buying cocoa grown through the illegal clearing of protected forests and national parks as a standard practice. In Côte d’Ivoire, where Cargill is the largest trader, an estimated 40% of the cocoa came from inside national parks and other protected areas.
Cargill joins other chocolate and cocoa companies and the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana in the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, committing themselves to immediately end sourcing from national parks and protected areas, to restore forests, and to shift to more responsible practices. But a report by Mighty Earth shows that a year later, deforestation had increased.
2018
Along with four other traders, Cargill is fined 29 million dollars by the Brazilian government for purchasing soy connected to the illegal deforestation in the Cerrado.
In a report by Mighty Earth, Cargill is linked to the destruction of the Gran Çhaco in Argentina and Paraguay.
2019
In a report by Greenpeace International, Cargill is found to be exporting soy from an agricultural estate in Brazil with a long record of violence, illegality, and environmental destruction. Cargill supplier Estrondo had recently renewed a permit to deforest more than 60,000 acres of land in the rapidly-disappearing Cerrado. Members of traditional geraizeira communities have reported being detained, abducted, shot, and having access to communal lands restricted by Estrondo’s private security force.
Following a season of record fires in the Amazon—nearly all due to intentional land clearings for industrial agriculture —a report by Mighty Earth finds that the majority of fires are found to have been set along BR-163, which leads to Cargill’s port at Santarem.
According to the Stockholm Environment Institute and Trase, Cargill along with ADM and Bunge found to be exporting 13 million tons of soy from the Cerrado – the production of which was associated with the clearance of 648 square miles of Cerrado vegetation.
2020
According to a collaborative investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Greenpeace Unearthed, ITV News, and the Guardian, 66,000 tons of soy beans tracked from Cerrado’s Matopiba region, including some from Formosa do Rio Preto, the Cerrado’s most heavily deforested community, were loaded aboard a Cargill-leased bulk tanker to Cargill’s Seaforth soya crush plant in Liverpool. At least nine of Cargill suppliers in the Cerrado were found to have been involved in recent land clearance. Of the land owned or used by these companies since 2015, researchers found 309 square miles of deforestation and 12,397 recorded fires.
Mighty Earth report finds Cargill to be buying soy from suppliers that have cleared and deforested at least 65,000 acres across 10 farms in the Brazilian Cerrado since August 2020.
2021
The Bureau of Investigative Journalists finds Cargill found to be sourcing soy from Chinese-owned Fiagril and the multinational Aliança Agrícola do Cerrado, both of which have allegedly been supplied by a farmer fined and sanctioned multiple times after destroying swathes of rainforest.
France names Cargill as one of two leading importers of soyabeans from areas at risk of deforestation.
According to a report by Rainforest Action Network, Cargill resumed business with Guatemalan palm oil supplier REPSA (Reforestadora de Palma S.A.), whose links
to corruption, bribery, violence, and intimidation forced them to suspend business ties in 2018. United Nations bodies cautioned the Guatemalan government that actions by REPSA and several other firms, ‘could be constitutive of indicators of human trafficking and forced labor and other severe forms of labor exploitation.’
2022
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Greenpeace Unearthed, Repórter Brasil and Ecostorm uncovered Cargill’s links with the Brazilian supplier farm, Fazenda Conquista. The farm in the Brazilian Amazon was responsible for eight sq km of deforestation since 2013, with multiple forest fires recorded in 2020. Its trading with Cargill includes supplying soya, and the farm has signed a deal to deliver 5,700 tons of corn to the company this year.
A report by Earthsight finds Cargill sourcing from 24,000-acre soy farm in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul that operates on the ancestral land of the Guarani Kaiowá, an Indigenous group that has spent the last several decades fighting violence and forced eviction.
A study by Unearthed and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds Cargill to be sourcing soya from cleared Amazon land in Mato Grosso state, Brazil, Fazenda Conquista. The farm has been linked to an estimated 3 sq miles of destruction in the Amazon since 2013, with multiple fires recorded in 2020. Conquista’s trading with Cargill has included supplying soya and the farm has signed a deal to deliver 5,700 tons of corn to the company this year.
Global Canopy, the Stockholm Environment Institiute, and Trase find Cargill linked to regions in Brazil with the most deforestation and conversion.
2023
An investigation by Mighty Earth, Repórter Brazil and Ecostorm combining satellite data with observations on the ground shows evidence of a direct link between illegal deforestation in the Amazon and supplies of soya beans shipped from Brazil to the UK by US commodities giant Cargill. The report identifies the Santa Ana farm in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state on which thousand acres of forest were burned in 2022.