Here’s the deal.
You, a small farmer, convert a patch of rain forest to soy production.
Once the land is
converted, Cargill or some one like minded, offers to buy the land for above
market value to the farmer to develop another career, The government (the
Governer owns one of the largest soy plantations) says that you need to
reconvert 80% of the land back to forest. You, the smart farmer, realizes the
real money is in converting forest, not farming or trying your luck in the big
city. Back to the forest you go to convert more forest into money. The company
who buys the land has plausible deny ability about converting the forest, and
can be seen as altruistic in trying to pay you to move into a different profesion.
Suddenly Cargill becomes enlightened and says
no more, but why?
Biodiesel can be produced from corn or soy.
Cargill is heavily invested in both so now that corn is emerging as the major
market for biodiesel in the US, soy production isn’t as profitable. Cargills
land holdings have increased 140% since 2002, though since they are a private
company it is hard to know where the land is. When the soy bean price fell in
the early part of the decade soy farmers had a hard time making it and American
companies bought a lot of the soy fields in Brasil.. They also built a large
port in Santerem for exporting products. So is their new idealism to stop
deforestation due to altruism, or have they amassed enough soy production to
meet their needs, and now want to hold onto market share?
No matter what the motivation, the new idea
is good and should be supported, but how do you show appropriate appreciation
for a change in policy like this? If
the effort is contractual and has financial implications for the company into
the future if they change their policy, I could whole heartedly support the
action. If it is only a temporary change, made due to political and financial
influences, it becomes much more difficult to truly applaud. Unfortunately,
this dilemma is going to come up more and more often as business’s gets
positive press from green actions. Either which way at least something is finally working.
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