How sustainable is sustainable soy?

• In October 2024, Earthsight’s investigation, Secret Ingredient, traced soy used to feed European chickens to deforestation and illegalities in the Brazilian Cerrado. Two of the producers featured in the report are certified by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), which provides a stamp of sustainability for over 66,000 soy producers. These cases once again cast doubt over the effectiveness of certification schemes in cleaning up supply chains
• In RTRS’s own words, being certified is a “synonym for sustainability.” Yet Earthsight’s analysis suggests the scheme’s weak standard is facilitating the greenwashing of deforesters and land grabbers in the Cerrado
• RTRS is largely based on the sale of ‘credits’, which firms can purchase to claim they are supporting responsible soy production. However, this does not mean they stop sourcing soy linked to deforestation or human rights abuses. RTRS’s credits system gives global consumers a misleading image of sustainability, while discouraging companies from taking meaningful action to address the impacts of their supply chains
• Earthsight’s analysis reveals several instances where RTRS’s principles and criteria have been violated on certified farms, suggesting that even if the standard were strengthened, the scheme’s effectiveness would still be undermined by weak enforcement and a flawed auditing process
• As companies prepare to comply with regulations aimed at curbing the environmental and human rights impacts of global supply chains, it is critical that the value of certification schemes is scrutinised. They must not be viewed as evidence of compliance with important due diligence laws, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the UK Environment Act 

Nestled in the Matopiba region, Brazil’s agricultural frontier which sees staggering clearance of irreplaceable Cerrado vegetation every year, the Franciosi Agro Group grows soy ostensibly in line with the set of criteria outlined by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) – a certification scheme whose standard is aimed at minimising agribusinesses’ environmental and social impacts. Franciosi Agro has two farms in western Bahia state certified by RTRS: Santo Antonio and Santana. The idea is that traders purchasing soy from these properties can rest easy, assured that they are buying sustainable soy from a responsible producer. 

But here lies a glaring problem: Franciosi Agro is not a responsible producer. Less than 40km away from the company’s certified properties lies the Santa Isabel farm complex, also used for soy production, where Franciosi Agro has carried out rampant deforestation in recent years, as exposed in Earthsight’s investigation, Secret Ingredient. 

In 2023, a representative of the firm revealed to Earthsight undercover investigators that 5,000 hectares (ha) had recently been cleared on Santa Isabel – an area almost the size of Manhattan. Earthsight has only been able to locate permits for 2,000ha of this deforestation, leaving 3,000ha of apparent illegal clearance. 

Analysis of satellite images of Franciosi Agro’s other properties shows the group cleared an additional 5,000ha of Cerrado vegetation in western Bahia between 2021 and 2023. 

Franciosi Agro’s case exemplifies a key flaw in RTRS that facilitates the greenwashing of deforesters in the Cerrado and other critical biomes. To become certified, producers do not have to comply with the scheme’s standard on all their farms; instead, they can cherry-pick those they wish to certify while violating the standard on others. This has also been observed in other soy-producing countries. Analysis of audit reports from Argentina reveals that one farmer put forward 13,000ha of soy fields for certification while excluding 36,000ha on 11 other sites, explicitly stating that these properties would not meet the RTRS criteria.

It is difficult to see what positive impact, if any, RTRS can have on improving the sustainability and legality of soy production, as agribusinesses can simply certify properties which are already compliant with its standard while maintaining bad practices on other farms. 

Green land grabbers, certified  

Also in western Bahia are two properties owned by the Horita Group, another soy producer named in Secret Ingredient. Horita’s Sagarana and Centúria farms are RTRS-certified, yet both are tied to allegations of land grabbing and violence against traditional communities known as geraizeiro and fecheiro, who have inhabited the region for generations.

Crucially though, it is not the farms themselves that are directly connected to land disputes, but their legal reserves – areas that producers are required to set aside for preservation under the Brazilian Forest Code. In the Cerrado, legal reserves must make up at least 20 per cent of a property’s total area. They can also be located far away from the original farm, and it has become common practice in Bahia for agribusinesses to allocate their legal reserves to traditional community lands, a manoeuvre known as ‘green land grabbing’. RTRS certification is limited to the boundaries of a certified property, and it is unclear whether the scheme’s standard extends to a farm’s legal reserves when these are located elsewhere, or whether certification bodies are required to audit them. Earthsight contacted RTRS for clarification on this, but did not receive a response.

However, an academic study has found that, in practice, legal reserves located outside the boundaries of certified farms are not audited. This means that ongoing land disputes and conflicts with communities linked to these areas risk being missed completely, allowing Horita and other agribusinesses to remain certified even in cases where there is clear evidence and court rulings substantiating their involvement in land grabbing and human rights abuses. This is a particularly acute problem in western Bahia, where several ongoing land disputes between agribusiness and traditional communities centre around legal reserves.

Guilt-free deforestation: The problem with RTRS credits 

A key feature of RTRS is its use of a credits-based system, through which agribusinesses can sell one RTRS credit for every tonne of certified soy they produce (as long as they do not then sell the physical soy as certified). Credits can be purchased by commodity traders, manufacturers or supermarket chains directly from the soy producers, or from resellers, on RTRS’s online platform. These companies can then claim they support responsible soy production without having to actually purchase certified soy. In fact, businesses seem to prefer buying credits as this frees them from the burden of having to trace and segregate certified soy. It is not surprising then to learn that credits made up 90 per cent of RTRS soy in 2022. 

Companies purchasing RTRS credits are not allowed to claim that their products contain RTRS soy; instead, their goods can have labels stating they support responsible soy. Arguably, however, most consumers would see this as assurance that a product is free from human rights or environmental abuses.

RTRS credits work in a similar way to carbon offsetting: a company may continue to drive harm by purchasing ‘dirty soy’, while claiming to help prevent harm elsewhere. It does little towards the scheme’s aim of promoting the growth of responsible soy production, as agribusinesses engaging in deforestation or illegalities – such as those exposed in our report – are able to continue profiting off such activities by selling their soy to companies buying credits from RTRS-certified farms.  

Meanwhile, companies are discouraged from taking meaningful action to rid their supply chains of deforestation. Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn purchases credits covering 100 per cent of the South American soy used in its own-brand products, despite acknowledging in a letter to Earthsight that these credits do not rid its supply chains of deforestation. In fact, Secret Ingredient linked Albert Heijn’s soy supply chains to environmental and rights abuses in the Cerrado.

Undetected violations 

Even if RTRS could be reformed, the scheme’s effectiveness would still be undermined by weak enforcement and a flawed auditing process. The Horita Group provides an example of one of RTRS’s most revered criteria being violated without resulting in the rescindment of the property’s certificate. Within Horita’s certified Centúria farm, Bahia’s environment agency identified 11,000ha of illegal deforestation between 2012 and 2018, in clear violation of the standard’s ban on the conversion of native forests after 2009. 

The Horita Group is also linked to one of Brazil’s largest corruption scandals, where favourable court rulings were secured to legitimise 800,000ha of land grabs. Walter Horita – one of the Horita Group’s owners – is listed as one of the individuals involved. A plea bargain confirming this surfaced in 2024.

Despite strong and publicly available evidence linking the Horita Group to corruption – which is contrary to RTRS’s standard – the company’s continued certification may have been enabled by weak guidance for auditors tasked with assessing compliance. Auditors are only explicitly required to check if agribusinesses have a system and policy in place to manage bribery risks. They are seemingly not expected to check other sources of information for whether the firm is actually tied to any corruption cases. Earthsight sought clarification from RTRS on its auditing requirements but received no response. 

This is not the only example of weak enforcement of RTRS’s standard: portions of Franciosi Agro’s RTRS-certified properties – Santana and Santo Antonio – have been under embargoes since 2018 for runways that were built for the aerial spraying of pesticides and other agrichemicals without the proper environmental license. Flight data analysed by Earthsight shows several instances when the runway at Santana farm has been used since 2018 despite the embargo prohibiting its operation.  

These violations of Brazilian environmental law breach RTRS’s requirement on compliance with relevant laws. RTRS’s standard is unclear on the issue of properties with embargoed areas, making no explicit reference to them. RTRS did not respond to Earthsight’s questions on this. 

Interviews carried out by academic researchers in western Bahia between 2017 and 2020 with auditors, RTRS staff, soy producers, NGOs and other actors revealed a lax approach to audits of certified farms. Soy producers would often come to an agreement with local communities prior to audit visits to ensure complaints were not voiced. Auditors accepted the availability of comment boxes on a firm's website or at the farm gate as evidence that grievance mechanisms were in place.  

Secret Ingredient led RTRS to suspend the certificates for Horita and Franciosi Agro pending an investigation. While this is a step in the right direction, if RTRS’s investigation is limited to the certified properties, it will not find the deforestation carried out by Franciosi Agro on its other farms, evidence of land grabbing linked to Horita’s certified properties’ legal reserves, or indications of the Horita Group’s involvement in corruption.   

RTRS did not respond to Earthsight’s questions about the outcome of its investigation. The Horita Group and Franciosi Agro Group did not respond to Earthsight’s requests for comment.  

As awareness grows among consumers and companies feel increasing pressure to clean up their supply chains, certification schemes can seem like the ideal quick fix for addressing the environmental and human rights impacts of soy and other commodities. It is therefore vital that policymakers consider the limitations of certification schemes, including RTRS, and ensure they are not treated as evidence of compliance with important due diligence laws, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the UK Environment Act. The onus is on firms to conduct due diligence as more than a tick-box exercise and carry out their own, rigorous checks to eliminate deforestation and illegalities from their supply chains, rather than pawn the process off onto flawed certification schemes.