As the food giant seeks a listing on the US stock market, its chief executive, Gilberto Tomazoni is toughening the company’s stance on Scope 3 emissions.
Speaking at the New York Times’ Climate Forward event, Mr Tomazoni said the company is committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2040 and would do so without the use of offsets.
Gilberto Tomazoni
"We have 110 million acres degradated (sic). If we bring this land back to health, we provide biodiversity. (It) will produce more and you’ll see (insetting) carbon, not losing carbon,” he said.
Mr Tomazoni cited the example of a project in Brazil where JBS was rotating grazing with cropping along with reforestation.
“You can have 40% additional food and you keep carbon, not emit carbon,” he said.
Asked whether he considered that regenerative agriculture, Mr Tomazoni replied “it is not regenerative agriculture, it is diversification on the same land.”
Mr Tomazoni said the company’s intention to reach net zero by 2040 was to send a message to its supply chain to ensure it took the target seriously.
“Why did we put the claim to 2040? Why not 2050?,” he said. “This is important to understand our intention.”
“We have a vast supply chain (and) we give a clear message that this is the way we will be working. Each (business) that works with us should be working to connect their plan to our plan to be net zero.”
According to the JBS Brazil website, the company has over 78,000 suppliers registered on its supplier system and environmental groups have written to the US market regulator to block the company’s US listing over deforestation concerns.
An audit by Brazilian prosecutors last year found nearly 17% of the cattle bought by JBS in Para state in the Amazon rainforest from July 2019 to June 2020 allegedly came from ranches with "irregularities" like illegal deforestation. JBS said at the time that issues that led to the purchases had been fixed.
Speaking at the New York Times event, Mr Tomazoni said the “the only solution for this deforestation in Brazil is to have a national mandatory traceability system.”
Under a mandatory traceability system, “we can track individual by individual animals. It is our priority to do that.”
JBS's Brazilian website states that by the end of 2025, 100% of active suppliers will have added their supply chain data to the company’s Transparent Livestock Farming Platform. If a direct supplier of JBS has not adhered to the platform to verify the status of their supply network or has not encouraged their suppliers of calves and feeder cattle to report on socio/environmental liabilities, they will be automatically blocked from doing business with the company.
“We are zero tolerance for deforestation and are monitoring an area the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined and we have blocked 60,000 farmers that are not in compliance with out policy,” Mr Tomazoni said.
Other key moments from the talk included;
JBS’s commitment to plant based foods, and the fact they are building the largest commercial facility for cultivating meat cells in Spain (16.52)
The importance of empowering farmers with funding and knowledge and his concern that only 2% of climate change related funding goes to agriculture (20.51)
How they have seen a 70% reduction in methane emissions with livestock supplements (22.25)
