DiscoveryMinerva dominates market share and deforestation risks
Following Minerva’s acquisition of its competitor JBS’s Paraguayan subsidiary in 2017, the Brazilian food group went from a 19% share of Paraguayan beef exports in 2016 to a 41% share in 2018.
Following Minerva’s acquisition of its competitor JBS’s Paraguayan subsidiary in 2017, the Brazilian food group went from a 19% share of Paraguayan beef exports in 2016 to a 41% share in 2018. Trase data suggest that Minerva sources much of its beef from the Chaco region, which has been experiencing intensive deforestation, largely driven by cattle ranching. This is due in part to the fact that the company’s Paraguayan subsidiary, Frigomerc, owns an export-oriented slaughterhouse on the edge of the Chaco. In 2018, Trase estimates that the company’s exports accounted for almost 70% of all cattle deforestation risk among Paraguayan exporters. Minerva’s company zero-deforestation commitment only applies to the Amazon biome and its commitments with regard to slave labour, fraudulent land claims, violence and invasions of indigenous territory also only apply to products from Brazil.
Glossary
- Gran Chaco
- A diverse biome that includes dry forests, savannahs, grasslands and wetlands. It covers 6.5 million km2, extending into eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina and southwestern Brazil. Large areas of the Gran Chaco have been cleared for croplands and grazing lands in the last 30 years. For how we calculate deforestation in the Paraguayan Chaco see also Dry Chaco and Humid Chaco.
- Commodity deforestation risk
- Estimates a trader or import country’s exposure to the risk that a commodity it is sourcing is directly associated with recent deforestation in the area where it was produced. Measured in hectares. Trase takes the area of production in a given year, then determines how much of that area was cleared of native vegetation in recent years, and assigns that area to buyers proportionally to their share of the output from that production area. Commodity deforestation risk can also be calculated for a production area. Read more about how we calculate commodity deforestation risk. See also commodity deforestation and relative deforestation risk.
- Zero-deforestation commitment
- Publicly available commitments made by companies that their supply chains will not include commodities produced on recently deforested land.
- Amazon
- The Amazon basin includes the most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world. 60% of the Amazon biome is in Brazil. Trase data for the Brazilian Amazon include 496 municipalities. See also Legal Amazon.
