Soy production for industrial livestock farming, a key element in the deforestation of tropical ecosystems· According to a new report published by Ecologistas en Acción, the deforestation of tropical ecosystems is part of a long supply chain that begins in South America and ends on European plates.
· The study With soy around the neck shows an x-ray of the massive consumption of soy in Spanish industrial livestock farming: volumes, actors, impacts and alternatives.
Soybeans are a highly valuable ingredient due to their quality and high amount of protein. However, of the world's soybean production, only 6 % of whole beans are destined for human consumption. Soy has become a star ingredient in the production of animal feed, a use that has a long list of socio-environmental impacts worldwide. The latest report from Ecologists in Action, With soy around the neck, documents what these impacts are and who the main actors are, figures and their alternatives.
The published report shows how soybeans have become widespread as an ingredient in feed for industrial livestock farming, mainly due to the variety and profitability of the by-products obtained from their processing. The most used: oil intended for the production of so-called biofuels and industrial foods, or soy flour and cake used in animal feed. Soy cake alone represents around 70 % of soybean use in the industry, relegating the contribution of proteins through traditional and indigenous sources to a marginal role: a scant 2.2 % of the raw materials used in this sector in Spain.
Spain: livestock maquila
According to the report With soy around the neck, the massive import of low-priced soybeans, together with the growing production of cereals, heavily subsidized in Europe to the detriment of protein crops, has been decisive for the development of the feed industry and the expansion of intensive livestock farming.
In 2018, the Spanish State was the largest producer of compound feed in Europe with more than 37 million tons. In 2019, 6.1 million tons of soy were imported and more than 7 million tons of meat were produced, well above the 2 million tons consumed in Spanish homes.
Currently, Spain is the second largest meat producer in Europe in quantities that compete with Germany, with just over half the population. For example, in the case of pork, it is self-sufficient in more than 170 %, which has made it the leading exporter of pork products to China.
In the words of Isabel Fernández Cruz, spokesperson for Ecologistas en Acción, “our territory is a meat maquila, where large quantities of cheap foreign raw materials are received, to be transformed into higher value products, which are again exported to third countries. This model brings with it serious socio-environmental impacts, both in soy cultivation places and in rural Iberian territories: pollution of water, air, loss of biodiversity, etc., as well as a progressive depopulation of the rural areas where soy is grown. They install 'macro farms'. Meanwhile, traditional family farms and all the ecosystem services associated with more traditional, extensive and sustainable livestock systems are lost.”
Who is behind the soybean market?
As the environmental organization's report shows, the supply of the industrial livestock chain in Spain depends largely on just two multinationals, Bunge and Cargill. These companies cover the entire soybean production chain: supply of inputs to farmers; transportation from the American continent to Spain; transformation into by-products in their grinding plants in the Spanish port facilities themselves; and distribution of their products to feed manufacturing companies that continue with the integrative circuit in industrial livestock farming.
The dominant companies in the Spanish feed market – Nutreco, Grupo Fuertes, Coren, Vall Companys, bonÀrea and Costa Foods – cover the entire chain. From the production of feed, breeding and fattening of animals, to processing and marketing, where a company or group of the same corporation can monopolize two or more links in the chain. All of them converge in the use of vertical integration, where integrated farms are limited to supplying labor and facilities, and ranchers become proletarianized, losing control over the means of production.
Greenwashing of soybeans
The EU is the world's second largest importer of tropical deforestation and associated emissions, and is responsible for at least 16 % of deforestation linked to international trade, with a total of 203,000 hectares and 116 million tonnes of CO₂. The cultivation of soybeans is linked to the deforestation of areas very rich in biodiversity in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, as well as greenhouse gas emissions, pollution from the use of agrochemicals and the forced displacement of indigenous and peasant communities. .
Due to growing public pressure, the feed industry focuses a good part of its communicative and institutional activity on decoupling its raw materials from deforestation and bringing it closer to sustainable production. Both FEFAC (European Federation of Manufacturers) and CESFAC (Spanish Confederation of Compound Animal Food Manufacturers) follow or recommend certification schemes that offer very few real guarantees.
Ecologistas en Acción denounces in its report that the presence of certification seals on final products misleads consumers, giving the impression that a certified product is “green” when it is, in reality, “just another tool of communicative impact that “It contributes to making the problem invisible.”
Regulation and alternatives to soy
The report With soy around the neck highlights the need for effective legislative measures to be developed at the regulatory level – on which the EU has begun to work – to stop the import of raw materials linked to deforestation. Also that business actions are regulated, with the aim of preventing, penalizing and holding responsible for the impacts they cause at an environmental and social level.
In parallel, Ecologists in Action proposes that, to stop imported deforestation, work must be done on policies that drastically reduce the negative impacts of the food system on forests and other ecosystems. This implies a profound reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and trade agreements such as the EU-Mercosur.
Tom Kucharz, spokesperson for Ecologistas en Acción, added: “All this accompanied by a structural change in the way we consume and produce food, which will require the adoption of policies that promote the reduction of the production and consumption of meat and dairy products, "bet on the cultivation of native legumes for human consumption and transition to extensive and ecological livestock systems, adapted to the resources and particularities of each territory."
