The truth behind sugar: anything but sweet

Too often, the sugar in your favourite food and drinks is sourced by kicking farmers and their families off their land. This leaves people homeless and hungry. But you can change this.

Tell Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Associated British Foods (ABF) to make sure their sugar doesn’t lead to land grabs.

As global demand for sugar increases, so does the rush for land to grow it.

Oxfam has found that, in countries like Brazil and Cambodia, companies that supply sugar to Coke, Pepsi and other food and beverage giants are kicking poor farmers off their land and robbing them of their rights. Elsewhere, ABF - the biggest sugar producer in Africa - is reported as linked to a range of other unresolved land disputes.

The power of you

More than 120,000 people around the world have already called on the world’s biggest food companies to change the way they do business in our Behind the Brands campaign. And it’s working.

And with the support of more than 50,000 people and Coldplay, we’ve already won some important victories in the fight against land grabs. Our campaigning pushed the World Bank to review its policies on land and commit to a new UN standard on land rights.

Now it’s time for these three sugar giants to act first and fast in phase two of our Behind the Brands campaign.

Stop land grabs

To make sure that their sugar doesn’t lead to land grabs, Coke, Pepsi and ABF need to:

• Know how their sugar impacts communities’ access to land, and whether they and their suppliers are respecting land rights;
• Show where the ingredients they use come from – and who grows them;
• Act by committing to zero tolerance for land grabs, throughout their supply chains and their own operations.

Work with governments and others to do the same. It’s time to put a stop to land grabs. Sign the petition now.

Mary Quinn is Oxfam Ireland’s Campaign and Outreach Executive.