Assessing tropical deforestation in Germany’s agricultural commodity supply chains - May 2022

the reconciliation process Any derived commodities produced outside of is still performed across Trase focal countries are not linked to sourcing the global dataset, but of the parent commodities, and therefore trade Trase data is automatically of such derived forms are not captured with preserved), retaining the assignment to the point of harvest of primary subnational specificity of commodity. [...] Similar to the above, we make the assumption for the direct trade analysis that derived products are linked to the production of the primary product (and therefore associated deforestation risk) in the same country; for example, that soy cake imported from Brazil is linked with the production of soybean (and any associated deforestation) in Brazil. [...] Despite these differences, some patterns in the consumption results are consistent with the direct trade and re-export-adjusted perspectives; for example, the declining prominence of Paraguay as a source of deforestation and the growing importance of Colombia. [...] This ranking changes for the other two perspectives: while China still dominates, the Netherlands and Spain outrank Germany in terms of deforestation risk from the direct trade and re-export-adjusted perspectives, with the Netherlands associated with a particularly large amount of deforestation from the direct trade perspective. [...] The state of Bahia has been the most important source of soy deforestation risk for Germany over the time series, making up 63.1% and 53.3% of the 2016-2018 risk from the direct trade and re-export-adjusted perspectives, respectively.