JBS to continue community livestock programme in Rondônia
04/01/2018
JBS first became involved in a social project to help communities in São Miguel do Guaporé in 2017. It bought almost 2,000 head of cattle there last year, paying just over $1 million. Around 100 local families were part of the project in 2017, but JBS 470 families will benefit before the end of 2019.
The company became involved in the project at São Miguel do Guaporé because of its interest in using ethically sourced by-products from its meat operations to make biodiesel. In 2015, the federal government in Brazil launched a programme to certify a proportion of the country’s biodiesel as benefiting social projects in rural areas, supporting farmers who grow crops such as soya or raise cattle. The JBS initiative is part of this wider programme, which is called Selo Combustível Social.
JBS has said that, in Brazil, tallow from livestock is the second-most important raw material for producing biodiesel and that it has pioneered the inclusion the cattle value chain in the Selo Combustível Social programme. The company has two biodiesel factories, one in Lins in São Paulo and one in Campo Verde in Mato Grosso. Together, these factories produced 210 million litres of biodiesel in 2017.
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