Rainforest Action Network

• ADM is deeply involved in the production and marketing of both palm oil and soy. It is also one of the greatest recipients of corporate welfare, which means taxpayers are subsidizing ADM’s role in rainforest destruction. ADM is also the strongest promoter of agrofuels in the United States.
• Bunge, though not a household name in the U.S., is the largest agribusiness and food company operating in Brazil. Bunge’s soy operations are devastating communities and ecosystems throughout South America.
• Cargill is the most powerful agribusiness and commodity trading group in the world. It is involved in producing and marketing palm oil and soy grown on freshly cleared rainforest lands. In 2003, Cargill built an illegal soy port on the Amazon River which doubled deforestation rates in the area.

• Destruction of vital ecosystems: Palm oil and soy plantations are expanding into the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, including rainforests, grasslands and peat swamps in South America, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Africa. These regions are home to millions of plant and animal species, including highly endangered orangutans, clouded leopards, maned wolves, and Amazon river dolphins.  

• Contribution to global climate change: Clear-cutting and burning forests and peat swamps to make way for plantations contributes heavily to climate change. In fact, deforestation accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the main reason that Indonesia and Brazil are now the world’s third and fourth largest greenhouse gas polluters.

• Displacement of Indigenous people, local communities and family farmers: The spread of massive soy and palm oil plantations often violates traditional and Indigenous land rights and forces small family farmers to shift from subsistence to export-driven commodity farming, or pushes them off their land entirely.

• Labor exploitation: Many soy and palm oil plantation workers face abuse, harsh working conditions, and exposure to toxic pesticides.  In Brazil, slave labor is still used on many soy and sugar cane plantations.

RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign is building broad-based support in the United States to hold U.S. agribusinesses accountable for the damage they do to people and ecosystems. Partnering with Indigenous and traditional peoples, small family farmers and local groups in the affected regions, we are advancing the following demands:

• Stop land clearing and deforestation for agrisprawl.
• Respect land rights. Indigenous and local communities must be able to give free, prior and informed consent before any industrial activity takes place on their land.
• Oppose slave labor. Fair and safe working conditions for all workers.
• Stop using dangerous herbicides and pesticides.
• Do not spread or promote the use of genetically modified crops.
• Respect food sovereignty and people’s right to define their own food, energy and agricultural systems.
• Do not produce or promote the use of industrial agrofuels, especially those sourced from tropical ecosystems.
• Don’t break the law. Comply with all local, national and international environmental, labor and agricultural laws.

Join RAN in our campaign to end U.S. agribusinesses' global agrisprawl. Help build a movement to replace corporations’ global appetite for destruction with people-led local food and renewable energy systems that sustain our communities and our planet.

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