Not everybody accepts, however, that the problems of soya production are as widespread as campaigners claim.
Robert Newbery, the British National Farmers Union’s (NFU) chief poultry adviser, said soya products for animals were only part of a global industry that also produced soya oil for processed food, and most crops were planted on existing agricultural land.
Newbery said the NFU would support action to tackle wrongdoing by soya farmers, but said they were confident “the majority is grown ethically.”
Bunge, which with Cargill is one of the biggest soya production companies in the region, also said it had been working for many years, especially in Brazil, to make the industry more sustainable, including helping to drive through a moratorium on buying soya from newly deforested parts of the Amazon, and working with the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment on promoting best practices among producers.
“A lot has been done, but there is always more to do,” a spokesman said.
Ramirez now lives in the optimistically named El Triunfo (The Triumph), a rural settlement off the trunk road heading west from Ciudad del Este. He and his fellow subsistence farmers hope to prevent soya’s continual encroachment by joining the ownership of their lands together so the soya farmers can’t pick them off one by one.
POLICY CHANGE PUSH
Back in the UK, FoE is calling for the government to axe subsidies which encourage intensive livestock production, lobby the EU and other organizations to change trade policies and international aid which bolster the industry, and ensure that the £2.2 billion (US$3.25 billion) a year spent on food by public bodies such as schools, hospitals, prisons and care homes is not used to buy products from intensive soya-fed animals.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has also said that people should have at least one meat-free day a week.
“Most people don’t realize that there’s a hidden chain of events linking the meat and dairy they buy to factory farming and to climate change, deforestation and loss of livelihoods in developing countries,” said Clare Oxborrow, FoE’s senior food campaigner.
“The government must revolutionize the way that meat and dairy is produced in this country to urgently tackle these impacts while supporting sustainable UK livestock farming,” she said.
RSS