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FGV palm products to be detained at US ports
IN BRIEF
EGYPT: A commodities exchange for wheat, oils, sugar and rice is being set up in Egypt, Reuters reported on 9 September.
The exchange would have 91M Egyptian pounds (US$5.78M) in capital, provide protection for small farmers and producers, and make their stocks available to the wider market, the supply ministry in Egypt was quoted as saying.
Farmers, traders and producers could deposit their stocks in any of the supply ministry’s certified storage facilities where they would be evaluated and graded, then directly traded on the electronic platform, Reuters reported.
FGV palm oil products to be detained at US ports
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office has issued a detention order on palm oil made by Malaysia’s FGV Holdings Berhad, based on information indicating the use of forced labour, the agency said on 30 September.
Effective from 30 September, palm oil and palm oil products made by FGV Holdings and its subsidiaries and joint ventures would be detained at all US ports of entry, according to a CBP press release.
“CBP’s Office of Trade directed the issue of a Withhold Release Order (WRO) against FGV palm oil and palm oil products based on information that reasonably indicated the use of forced labour.
“The order followed a year-long investigation revealing forced labour indicators including abuse of vulnerability, deception, restriction of movement, isolation, physical and sexual violence, intimidation and threats, retention of identity documents, withholding of wages, debt bondage, abusive working and living conditions and excessive overtime. The investigation also raised concerns that forced child labour was potentially being used.”
In response, FGV said in a press release on 1 October that all the issues raised had been the subject of public discourse since 2015 and it had taken several steps to correct the situation.
“FGV is not involved in any recruitment or employment of refugees. Effective 2020, FGV recruits its migrant workers mainly from India and Indonesia through legal channels and processes recognised and approved by the authorities of Malaysia and the source countries."
FGV said that since August 2019, it had been communicating with CBP through legal counsel and had submitted evidence of compliance of labour standards.
Mars says palm oil supply chain is deforestation free
US confectionery and food supply chain to its Asia-Pacific giant Mars claims it has elim- businesses, where it sourced inated deforestation from its palm oil from UniFuji – a palm oil supply chain, Greenbiz partnership between United reported on 7 October. Plantations and Fuji Oil –
The producer of Mars and which had reduced operations Snickers chocolate bars, Dolmio from 780 mills to just one. pasta sauce and Uncle Ben’s This had been achieved rice made the announcement as part of its Palm Positive Plan, which it launched in 2019. Mars said it had simplified its supply chain by shrinking the number of mills it worked with from 1,500 to a few hundred. Mars produces chocolate bars such as Mars, Snickers and Twix Photo: Adobe Stock through a 1:1:1 model – which meant oil palm was grown on one plantation, and processed through one mill and one refinery before reaching Mars. The Palm Positive Plan is part of the company’s US$1bn This number was expected to Sustainable in a Generation be reduced to less than 100 in itor land use with third-party take evidence-based action to Plan, where it was working 2021 and below 50 in 2022. validation through its partner- simplify and select the suppli- to stop deforestation in beef,
The company said it had ship with Earth Equalizer/Aid- ers and mills it sourced from. cocoa, palm oil, soya, and pulp used satellite mapping to mon- environment. This allowed it to One example was in its and paper.
WTO approves $4bn tariffs on US goods into Europe
The World Trade Organization has ruled that the EU may impose tariffs of up to US$4bn on goods imported from the USA, Olive Oil Times reported on 15 October.
The decision brings an end to a 16-year dispute between the USA and the EU over illegal subsidies provided to their respective aircraft manufacturers, which has affected Spanish olive oil producers.
In the WTO’s latest ruling, the USA was found to have illegally subsidised the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing. A WTO ruling a year ago found that the EU had illegally subsidised its own aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, allowing the USA to impose tariffs of US$7.5bn on European imports. This included 25% import duties on packaged olive oil from Spain, as well as some table olives from France and Spain.
On its part, the EU had identified several US industrial and agricultural goods as potential tariff targets, Olive Oil Times said.
Trade experts had widely expected the WTO’s announcement saying that this result had been necessary for the two sides to begin negotiations.
European trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said the EU hoped the USA would now drop the tariffs imposed on EU exports as this would help both sides find common ground. “If this does not happen, we will be forced to exercise our rights and impose similar tariffs,” he added.
NEWS
New coalition deforestation bid
Consumer goods giants and retailers have launched another bid to tackle deforestation after falling short of a 2020 goal tabled a decade ago, just-food reported on 22 September.
Manufacturers including Danone, Nestlé, and Unilever, as well as retailers including Carrefour, Tesco and Walmart, had joined the Forest Positive Coalition of Action to try to speed up efforts to ‘remove deforestation, forest degradation and conversion’ in the supply chains of palm oil and soyabeans, as well as paper, pulp and fibre-based packaging.
In 2010, The Consumer Goods Forum had set a target for its members to achieve ‘net deforestation’ by 2020. However, by the summer of 2019, US agribusiness giant Cargill had said it believed the target was unlikely to be met and in October 2019 Nestlé had said it would miss its goal.
Mars president and CEO Grant Reid said companies would take action in four areas.
“We will engage with suppliers and traders and ask that they implement forest positive commandments across their entire commodity operations. Two, we will join forces to address forest conservation challenges in key production landscapes. Three, we will engage governments and stakeholders to create an enabling environment for forest conservation and, four, we will ensure transparency and accountability by regularly reporting on progress,” Reid said.
Wai-Chan Chan from The Consumer Goods Forum said its members had learnt from the work undertaken to try to tackle deforestation over the last decade.
“In 2010, our strategy was rooted in remediating individual company supply chains, often through certification, ensuring that the sourcing of key commodities would not deplete tropical rainforests. As a result of the hard work our members have made in their supply chains, we have learned that certification plays a critical role, but it’s not the only answer,” he said.
In other news, reported by AFP, a coalition of 230 environmental groups and Brazilian agribusinesses sent an open letter on 15 September to Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro urging him to fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition urged Bolsonaro to establish clear policies to address the problem, including stopping the practice of granting landholder titles to irregularly seized and deforested land going back to 2008, and designating 10M ha of public forest as protected land.
Brazil set for fastest soya area growth in four years
Farmers in the north and northeast of Brazil are expecting to expand their soya fields at the fastest rate in four years, Reuters reported on 16 September.
The farmers in those regions, which are dominated by the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah, were set to expand their soya fields by more than 6% in the 2020/21 crop season.
Separate forecasts from consultancies Arc Mercosul and AgRural showed that in percentage terms, the regions would be the fastest growing in the whole country for soya. Both firms forecast the regions would add more than
Soya harvesting in 2008 at a farm in Campo Verde, in the centre west state of Mato Grosso, where the soya area is forecast to grow by 2.8% 350,000ha this crop season.
The soya fields would expand into newly deforested areas, previously created pastures, and marginal lands, the consultancies said.
Photo: Adobe Stock
According to environmentalists, replacing vegetation with farm fields would raise greenhouse gas emissions and hasten climate change. However, farmers said that Brazilian law allowed them to deforest a certain percentage of their land, which varied by region.
AgRural was projecting the soya-growing area in the north and northeast to increase by 6.4%, while Arc Mercosul was expecting 6.8% growth.
The centre-west, which includes top producing state Mato Grosso, was predicted to add the most area in absolute terms, growing by 2.8% or 463,000ha.
Surge in online orders and deliveries boost soya futures
A rise in online orders and deliveries during the COVID-19 pandemic has given a boost to soyabean oil futures, Bloomberg reported on 16 September.
The surge in online orders had boosted miles for trucks, usually powered by diesel and its green alternatives. However, the shutdown of restaurants and meat plants across the USA earlier in the year had led to a reduced amount of used cooking oil and animal waste available for use as feedstocks.
Soyabean oil futures traded in Chicago had rallied almost 40% since a low in March, when lockdowns in the USA had hit demand for most commodities, Bloomberg said. The US Department of Agriculture was already forecasting its use to make biodiesel would jump more than 3% this season after declining a year earlier.
“Truck traffic has been moving along,” said Mac Marshall, vice president of market intelligence for the United Soybean Board and the US Soybean Export Council.
“I’m probably going to get five Amazon packages at my door today. When you think about the long-haul truck fleets, those are primarily consuming diesel so the demand on the biodiesel side hasn’t abated.”
While traffic for passenger cars had dropped and was still down 16% from a year earlier in the week ended 30 August, truck miles were up 5%, according to Department of Transportation data.
“You’ve had a decline in slaughter in the second quarter, which meant less available supplies of feedstock on the rendering side, but you are also having less restaurant traffic and lower repurposed grease volumes,” Marshall said.
IN BRIEF
CHINA: Global agribusiness giant Cargill has acquired an oilseed crusher based in north China, AgriCensus reported on 15 September.
Cargill had secured the acquisition with a highest bid of CNY421M (US$62M) at an auction for the assets and facilities owned by Shandong Xinliang Oil Ltd, court documents showed.
The move would bring Cargill's crushing capacity to five facilities across the country.
CHINA: Imports of soyabean and vegetable oils are expected to reach record levels in China for the 2019/20 marketing year, AgriCensus reported on 9 October.
Soyabean imports for the year were forecast to total nearly 98M tonnes, up from an earlier estimate of 96M tonnes, according to the Chinese Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimate (Casde) for October 2020.
For the 2020/21 marketing year, imports were forecast at nearly 95.1M tonnes and domestic output at 18.82M tonnes.
Vegetable oil imports for 2019/20 were estimated at 9.27M tonnes, up from 8.96M tonnes in the previous year, against a backdrop of falling rapeseed imports.
Imports for 2020/21 had been left unchanged at 8.45M tonnes, with domestic production being maintained at 27.65M tonnes.
China's marketing year starts in October.
Judge bars Vicentin from selling some crush assets
A judge in Argentina has issued a ruling to stop cash-strapped crusher Vicentin from selling some of its assets, AgriCensus reported from local press coverage on 28 September.
Judge Nicolas Foppiani, a criminal judge in Rosario City, issued the ruling on behalf of the company’s creditors amid fears that any asset sales would make it harder for investors to collect on their debts.
The move followed Vicentin’s recent sale of its meat packing plant Friar to Dutch investment fund BAF.
This led a group of Vicentin’s creditors to pursue legal steps that prevented the judge overseeing the company’s preventive bankruptcy process in San Lorenzo, Judge Fabian Lorenzini, from banning it from selling other companies.
However, a lack of response from the judge had forced creditors to seek a precautionary measure at Rosario crown court, AgriCensus said.
The ruling covers Vicentin’s shares in oilseed crusher Renova, a 50-50 joint venture set up by the company and Switzerland-based international trader Glencore in 2006.
In December 2019, Vicentin sold one-third of its stake in Renova to Glencore Agriculture, increasing Glencore’s stake to 66.67%. Vicentin retained 33.33% ownership of Renova.
Vicentin has faced financial problems since defaulting on payments to grain suppliers and brokerage firms in December 2019.
The company was believed to owe approximately US$350M to grain suppliers, with a total estimated debt of US$1.5bn, AgriCensus said.
Amyris testing squalene alternative
Amyris is testing a squalene alternative to be used in vaccines
Photo: Heung Soon, Pixabay
US biotechnology ingredients firm Amyris is trialling an alternative to shark-based adjuvants currently used in a number of vaccines, including several COVID-19 vaccines.
The company said it was expecting to commercially produce its alternative squalene for adjuvants in the fourth quarter.
Squalene is a natural oil made in the liver of sharks and used as an ingredient in adjuvants to improve the efficacy of vaccines.
Adjuvants are added to vaccines to boost immune system response and squalene is typically sourced from deep-sea shark livers, a non-sustainable and non-scalable resource.
The company has developed a process to produce sugarcane-derived squalene as an effective alternative to shark-derived squalene.
“We are committed to delivering the world’s needs for a high performance, low cost sustainable squalene without killing a single shark,” said Amyris president and CEO John Melo.
Amyris’ products include ingredients for cosmetics, flavours and fragrances.
Japanese food manufacturing giant Nissin Foods Group is aiming to achieve 100% sustainable palm oil use by 2031, the company announced in its Sustainability Report 2020.
The company, which manufactures instant noodles such as its flagship Cup Noodles, had a palm oil procurement ratio certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) of 20% as of March 2020.
“The group will procure sustainable palm oil that takes into consideration deforestation prevention, biodiversity preservation, and the human rights of plantation workers,” the company wrote in its report. In addition, Nissin said it aimed to procure only palm oil that was assessed to be sustainable under its own standards by 2031.
As part of its drive to increase the use of sustainable palm oil in its products, Nissin started using RSPO-certified palm oil at all plants manufacturing its Cup Noodles product in Japan this year.
“Nissin has taken a step in the right direction," said the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). "What matters now for communities and forests on the frontlines of palm oil expansion is that the company immediately puts its policy into action,” RAN Japan representative Dr Toyo Kawakami said.
