A recent bill from the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs bans the country’s supermarkets from purchasing foods linked to illegal deforestation and land procurement practices.

Larger grocery chains like Tesco now need proof that their products such as soy and palm oil came through a supply chain that complies with local regulations. Failure to comply with these regulations will result in fines. This move comes ahead of the highly anticipated United Nations Global Climate Summit (COP26) that will be hosted in the UK.

The global rate of deforestation is estimated to be 10 million hectares per year with approximately 73 percent of tropical deforestation linked to both large-scale and local subsistence farming according to a recent report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The report indicates that agricultural expansion is the primary driver of deforestation.

But Dr. Daniel de la Torre Ugarte, a professor of agricultural economics at UT-Knoxville and a member of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, argues that the ban fails to pressure producers to make changes, explaining that producers can easily shift to a different market. He argues that to shift production practices, “we need to first understand how the commodities are produced.”

Read the full article about deforestation and agriculture by Matthew Wein at Food Tank.