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More Food Companies Look For Sustainability In Their Supply Chains
SARA WYANT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Farmers and ranchers frequently complain about burdensome and sometimes counter-productive regulations that make it more difficult to do the day-to-day business required on the farm. Some of the regulations require more training and recordkeeping than ever before, and that often means more people and on-farm costs.
But it is not just the government asking for more. Increasingly, major food companies are raising the bar over what they consider to be “sustainable” agricultural practices around the globe. And often, they work in conjunction with third party organizations that can verify whether targets are met.
For example, seven major food companies recently announced commitments to work with growers in their global supply chains to reduce water use and pollution impacts.
The seven companies – Diageo, General Mills, Hain Celestial, Hormel Foods, Kellogg, PepsiCo, and WhiteWave Foods – are participants in what they call the AgWater Challenge, a collaborative initiative organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Ceres.
The AgWater Challenge aims to spur companies to make time-bound and measurable commitments to reduce the water impacts associated with key agricultural commodities, implement locally-relevant strategies to mitigate risk in agricultural areas where water is scarce or polluted and support and incentivize farmers to strengthen water stewardship practices.
As part of the challenge, companies must submit detailed sustainable sourcing and water stewardship plans meeting specific criteria. Ceres and WWF will evaluate and report on companies’ progress against their commitments in one year.
“Major food brands can be a powerful and constructive force for scaling water stewardship, especially at the farm level where the biggest footprint is by far,” Brooke Barton, senior director of Water and Food at the nonprofit sustainability group Ceres, said in a news release. “These brands recognize the material financial impact that water risks pose to their business, from supply disruptions, to higher operating costs, to growth constraints. More than ever, companies are responding to these supply risks through farmer incentives, local partnerships and bottom line reductions.”
Commitments by Challenge participants include:
• Hormel Foods will develop a comprehensive water stewardship policy, setting water management expectations that go beyond regulatory compliance for its major suppliers, contract animal growers and feed suppliers – a meat industry first. Hormel Foods will also support and engage with growers in high water risk regions by gathering water-related data from contract growers and growers that supply animal feed – and establishing time-bound goals aimed at improving water quality in high water risk regions; and
• WhiteWave Foods will develop a time-bound road map for agricultural water stewardship over the next 24 months that addresses shared water challenges facing their key commodities (dairy, soy, almond and produce in particular) in areas of greatest water risk, including California.
Ongoing commitments
In addition to new commitments, the AgWater Challenge recognizes companies with ongoing commitments. Diageo, General Mills, and Kellogg were recognized as AgWater Stewards for showing action across all five categories of the groups’ AgWater Challenge checklist – from water risk assessments and setting reduction goals, to reducing water risk in agricultural supply chains and supporting producers in addressing these issues. Among these companies’ plans:
• General Mills completed a comprehensive risk assessment, including water use and water quality risks, of all raw materials bought worldwide, and a global water risk assessment of all its production facilities and growing regions, identifying 8 high-risk watersheds. It is partnering with local stakeholders on sustainable sourcing through collective action and policy advocacy in several high-water risk regions, including in California.
• Kellogg Company committed to responsibly source its global 10 priority ingredients (including rice, wheat, corn and sugar beets), by measuring continuous improvement for row crops through metrics focused on water, fertilizer use and other factors and is supporting 17,000 agricultural suppliers, millers and farmers across 22 different countries to optimize water use and enhance watershed quality, such as by providing financial and agronomic assistance.
On farm impact?
Exactly how these new initiatives will directly impact farmers and ranchers remain to be seen. You can bet that there will be more reporting required, however, there may also be more resources available to help deal with natural resources concerns.
For example, Diane Holdorf, Chief Sustainability Officer and vice president at Kellogg, recently shared her company’s plans to improve the livelihoods of 500,000 farmers by advancing climate and water smart agriculture practices that help them produce more using fewer natural resources. About 15,000 will be smallholder farmers from around the globe.
In the U.S., Holdorf said that Kellogg helped to bring over $70 million in leveraged funding from USDA’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) to five different regions where the food company sources wheat, corn and rice. They’ve worked with organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and companies like United Suppliers who can bring training and new practices to the farmers and perhaps new technologies.
“No one entity can do this alone,” Holdorf said. “We hope to convey the voice of agriculture and the needs of farmers and suppliers but equally important, there are a variety of different groups who bring great understanding of those opportunities.”
Asked if her firm would require farmers to meet certain sustainability metrics as a measure of success, Holdorf said, “That’s not actually what we are driving toward.”
She said that, with Kellogg’s commitment to responsibly source ingredients, the firm will work “by convening resources and understanding” that will really help farmers with their yields, their livelihoods, their resilience supporting their families. It’s there economic reality that we are trying to support.”
Will that include GMOs?
Kellogg has not asked any farmers to stop using genetically-modified organisms (GMO) as part of their effort to be more sustainable. In fact, they were one of the first food companies to announce that they were voluntarily labeling products that contained GMO ingredients.
However, some companies are, and that’s prompted major U.S. farm groups to urge food companies to think twice about their sustainability goals, saying they may actually be causing more harm than good.
The groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, are responding specifically to Dannon's recent pledge to eliminate genetically modified ingredients from its yogurt products, which they noted was just the latest such promise from prominent food manufacturers and retailers in recent years.
In a letter sent to Mariano Lozano, head of Dannon's U.S. operations, the farm groups said the company's strategy to eliminate GMOs (genetically modified organisms) “is the exact opposite of the sustainable agriculture that you claim to be seeking,” adding: “Your pledge would force farmers to abandon safe, sustainable farming practices that have enhanced farm productivity over the last 20 years while greatly reducing the carbon footprint of American agriculture.”
“This is just marketing puffery, not any true innovation that improves the actual product offered to consumers,” said Randy Mooney, chairman of the National Milk Producers Federation, and a dairy farmer from Rogersville, Missouri. “What’s worse is that removing GMOs from the equation is harmful to the environment – the opposite of what these companies claim to be attempting to achieve.”
Other groups signing on to the letter were the American Soybean Association, the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, the National Corn Growers Association, the National Milk Producers Federation, and the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. In a news release, the groups say they agree that biotechnology plays an important role in reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture, and challenged as disingenuous the assertion that sustainability is enhanced by stopping the use of GMO processes. ∆
SARA WYANT: Editor of Agri-Pulse, a weekly e-newsletter covering farm and rural policy. To contact her, go to: http://www.agri-pulse.com/
Editor’s note: Agri-Pulse Managing Editor Dan Enoch contributed to this column.
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