Agriculture and food

This report analyses how Dutch policies on foreign affairs, trade development, and other economic topics are promoting or hampering the advent and adoption of agroecology, agro-biodiversity and agroecological approaches and practices. More specifically, how public resources (both ODA as well as non-ODA, including through vehicles like Public Private Partnerships and blended finance constructions) are allocated to support agricultural development projects, and what share of, to what extent, and how, that funding is supportive of transformational agroecological approaches and practices.

African oil palm expansion is not working as planned. Only five international companies dominate industrial oil palm production in Africa. Some of which have been linked to social and environmental impacts, violating their buyers’ NDPE commitments. Therefore, investors may see risk in African palm oil caused by stranded land and reputation risk.

This research analysed the financing of supermarkets and foodservice companies Gategroup, Toridoll, Ahold Delhaize, Makro, A&W, Cencosud, Groupe Casino and Walmart, which are all sourcing from meat suppliers with poor animal welfare practices.

After the victory in the Climate Case against Shell, Friends of the Earth Netherlands wants the other major polluters to take action now. On January 13, FoE Netherlands delivered an urgent letter to 29 major polluters, asking them to come up with their own climate plan before April 15. Profundo helped Milieudefensie to select the largest Dutch climate polluters on the basis of various criteria. These include foreign multinationals with large global GHG emissions, which have located their holding company in the Netherlands for fiscal reasons.

In this research we developed and refined the evidence base on the function, design and impact potential of industry-led interventions that positively impact smallholder income. This evidence base will directly contribute to the Better Income learning agenda, IDH's Roadmap on Living Income and the Farmfit Intelligence Center.

Profundo and Milieudefensie investigated the financial flows between Dutch financial institutions and companies producing and trading high deforestation-risk commodities: palm oil, beef, pulp and paper, soy, rubber, cocoa and coffee. The Netherlands comes first among the EU member states in financing these commodities. Dutch banks ING, Rabobank and ABN Amro injected 3.1 billion euros in loans into these commodities between 2016 and 2021, two-thirds of which in palm oil and soy. At the end of 2020, pension funds, insurers and banks invested 362 million euros in shares and bonds issued by producers and traders of these commodities, three quarters of which in beef and palm oil.

This research identified the financial flows to the world’s largest agricultural commodity traders, which often have trading offices in Switzerland, as well as the plantations they own across the world. Many of these plantations are linked to social and environmental conflicts and controversies. But the Swiss government is not regulating the activities of these traders, not even indirectly as Swiss banks hardly play a role in the financing of these traders.