General Mills says there will be no deforestation in its supply chains for cocoa, palm oil and packaging by the end of next year.
The $20 billion food company, No. 7 on the Star Tribune 50, wants to prove environmental stewardship is the new business-as-usual.
"This is really the next chapter of our ambition to protect forests," said Louise Iverson, a global impact senior manager at General Mills. "We have an opportunity to have an impact through our scale."
The Golden Valley-based cereal and dough maker joins a number of major food companies that have made similar pledges. Minnetonka-based Cargill recently announced it would soon end deforestation in South America, where beef and soybean production levels millions of acres of the Amazon annually. Both Minnesota companies were among dozens of corporations and countries that in 2014 pledged to end global deforestation by 2030.
As many have found, making a deforestation promise is easy. Without legal accountability or financial incentive, it's even easier to break the promises.
"Despite many ambitious pledges, many companies and governments have made limited efforts to advance forest goals," says a Forest Declaration report released last fall.
A more recent assessment from activist group Global Canopy paints a starker picture. About 90% of worldwide deforestation is driven by agriculture, which is taking up more land to keep pace with a ballooning global human population.
"Voluntary action from companies doesn't cut it," the group says in its Forest 500 report. "Nearly two-thirds of companies that have set commitments are failing to publish adequate evidence of their implementation."
That sets the bar fairly low for General Mills to succeed relative to its peers, but fully achieving the deforestation goal requires continuous monitoring and transparent reporting.
"We're holding ourselves to our highest standards as we advance our ambitions," Iverson said. "For each of these categories we're relying on third-party methodology to define what these standards are and track progress."
The three ingredients General Mills chose are at highest risk of contributing to forest loss globally.
Palm oil consumption continues to grow rapidly worldwide in food, cosmetics and fuels, prompting the burning of tropical rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for increased production of the cheap, multipurpose fat.
Many General Mills products use palm oil, including Totino's pizza rolls, Pillsbury dough, various cereals and Betty Crocker mixes and frostings. About 21% of the company's palm oil suppliers were not certified deforestation-free as of 2022, an improvement from the year before.
The cutoff date for no deforestation in palm oil supplies is 2015 — meaning forests can not have been cleared for plantations after that date.
Most of General Mills' cocoa comes from West Africa, which is processed for use in Cocoa Puffs, Reese's Puffs, Nature Valley bars and Häagen-Dazs ice cream. The company says it is committed to its 2020 pledge for deforestation in cocoa supply chains.
For the wood fiber used in packaging and labels, about 60% is recycled and the rest comes from virgin sources. Just over 1% is "non-certified virgin and sourced from high-priority countries," the company reports.
The commitments were made in consultation with a number of outside organizations and will move General Mills much closer to its greenhouse gas reduction targets — which require far more work in supply chains than inside the company's own operations.
"We are optimistic because so much of this work is grounded in collective action," Iverson said. "We're working with so many partners, key ingredient suppliers and organizations where these ingredients are coming from."
Even as corporate pledges come closer to reality, there is skepticism among environmental groups about the necessary follow-through.
"One of the reasons that we are cautious about our optimism about Cargill's most recent commitment is the fact that they haven't followed through on many of their previous commitments," said Mathew Jacobson, campaign director at Stand.Earth, which recently set out a roadmap for Cargill to follow to honor its deforestation pledge.
"We need to make sure this is really happening on the ground and not just on paper."