Commodities
Due-diligence questions are rarely about a company in isolation. They are about how far back through a chain the public record reaches — and that depends far more on the commodity than on the country.
Soy
Soy moves through a concentrated set of crushers and traders before export, which means the company named on a shipping document is often several steps removed from the land the crop was grown on. Evidence questions about soy are usually questions about that gap.
Beef
Cattle typically move between properties before slaughter. Public records tend to describe the slaughterhouse and the final property well, and the earlier stages of the animal’s life poorly. That asymmetry is the central evidence problem in beef.
Timber
Timber evidence usually turns on species identification and harvest authorisation, both of which are documentary rather than observable from public registries alone.
Coffee
Coffee frequently passes through cooperatives, which aggregate output from many smallholders. This makes the cooperative highly visible in public record and the underlying producers largely invisible.