Working and living conditions

LDC is the world’s third-largest orange juice producer, and its sector operations in Brazil are linked to several working and living conditions issues. According to a report from Public Eye and Repórter Brasil, LDC has committed nearly 200 violations of labour law in the Brazilian citrus sector since 2010, approximately half of which relate to workers’ health and safety.

Pickers working for the company's suppliers reported that they do not earn the statutory minimum wage equivalent to around CHF 190 per month. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, in comparison to 2019, the real wages are even lower. With the social distancing rules on plantations, fewer pickers are being recruited, further increasing the pressure to be highly productive. The pickers are employed for the harvest season, which lasts between eight and eleven months, under precarious conditions and contracts that include daily productivity targets. Seasonally employed pickers at LDC are also denied access to the company’s healthcare benefits. In 2018, the multinational was ordered to pay a fine equivalent to 122,400 Swiss francs, after an inspection five years earlier revealed that 34 employees had been living in a former henhouse.

Deforestation and biodiversity loss

According to the Trase report, Louis Dreyfus is among the six major companies operating in the Brazilian soy supply chain (along with Bunge, Cargill, ADM, Amaggi, and COFCO), which traditionally have dominated the trade of soy from Brazil and were responsible for 58% of the soy exports in the country and exposed to a 68% direct risk of deforestation between 2006 and 2016. The main areas impacted are the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado savanna, more specifically in the Matopiba region, the new agricultural frontier of the soy expansion.  

Compared with the other global traders, LDC’s deforestation footprint is relatively small – its presence is mostly located in already consolidated soy growing areas. However, the company is also exposed to deforestation risks through its joint venture with Amaggi, the Amaggi & LD Commodities. Between 2009 and 2016, the joint-venture exported 2.6 million tonnes of soy from Matopiba (9% of all soy exported from the region), and was exposed to much higher relative deforestation risk than the parent companies: 8 ha per 1,000 tonnes.

In 2018, the company announced a policy to eliminate the destruction of native ecosystems and endangered wildlife from its soy supply chain. However, NGOs state that since the deforestation commitment, there was no detailed action plan stating clear objectives and deadlines.

LDC's palm oil supply chain is also linked to deforestation: the biggest and the fifth largest deforesters in Southeast Asia in 2018, the Malaysian company Bintulu Lumber Development (BLD) and the Indonesian Musirawas Group respectively, are suppliers of LDC.