We sought to examine which companies are responsible for this ongoing crisis. To do so, we drew on data and analysis from Conab (Brazil's national agency for agricultural supply) to overlay companies' grain silos and other facilities with deforestation data drawn from satellite analysis conducted by the Lapig Research Group at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil.

But this vast savanna is in a state of emergency, largely because of soy and cattle companies’ unsustainable practices. More than half has already been destroyed.

Brazil's Cerrado is a 200 million hectare, wildlife-rich forested savanna. It is home to five percent of the world’s biodiversity, including threatened species like the jaguar, giant anteater, fox, maned wolf, and marsh deer. The Cerrado’s soils store significant amounts of carbon that are released when the ground is ploughed up for agriculture. The Cerrado is also a vital source of water for millions of people living in the region. Half of Brazil's watersheds have their sources there, including the Pantanal, which is the largest wetland in the world. The Cerrado even powers Brazil's economy: 90 percent of Brazilians rely on hydroelectric power generated from watersheds originating in the Cerrado.

The Key Companies

While there are several soy companies that operate in the Cerrado, the analysis showed that Cargill and Bunge are the two soy traders most closely linked to deforestation. Both companies purchase soy from farmers, and then ship it around the world to feedlots, where chickens, pigs, and cows eat it before they are turned into chicken sandwiches, bacon, and burgers.

Cargill is the United States’ largest privately held company, with revenues of $120 billion, and is a global leader in trade of soy, palm oil, cattle, cotton, and other commodities. This American company has a decades-long history of destroying Brazil’s natural resources.

Bunge, which is publicly traded, is based in the leafy New York City suburb of White Plains, and is the biggest player in the Cerrado. It currently has the most installed infrastructure in Matopiba, made up of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, the region with the most deforestation for soy in the Cerrado. Recently, Bunge has extended its network even further in the region.

In addition to buying soy, Cargill and Bunge finance roads and other infrastructure, and provide fertilizers and other resources to farmers, giving them a direct role in driving deforestation across the agricultural frontier. Bunge is the leading company linked to deforestation risk in the Cerrado over the last five years, with Cargill second.

The 29 municipalities in the Cerrado where Bunge was operating a commercial silo saw almost 50,000 hectares of deforestation in 2015, and a cumulative 567,562 hectares from 2011 to 2015. The 24 municipalities where Cargill was operating a commercial silo saw 130,000 hectares of deforestation over that same five-year period. In addition, there are 12 municipalities where both Cargill and Bunge were operating silos; these areas saw a total of 90,129 hectares of total deforestation over the same period. To be clear, not all of the deforestation captured in this data was driven by soy; however, these companies are not taking sufficient steps to prevent the substantial amount of deforestation occurring in the regions where they operate, and in many cases are providing the financial incentives that spur the deforestation in the first place.