We study the changes produced by the deuteron on the QCD quark condensate by means of the FeynmanHellmann theorem and find that the pion mass dependence of the pion-nucleon coupling could play an important role. We also discuss the relation between the many body effect of the condensate and the meson exchange currents, as seen by photons and pions. For pion probes, the many-body term in the physical amplitude differs significantly from that of soft pions, the one linked to the condensate. Thus no information about the manybody term of the condensate can be extracted from the pion-deuteron scattering length. On the other hand, in the Compton amplitude, the relationship with the condensate is a more direct one.