Supply chain News and trends

Through its new partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, the dairy giant aims to implement regenerative agriculture practices and influence governments to adopt more climate-friendly policies.

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Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) has ramped up its sustainability journey by pledging to eliminate deforestation and converting to native vegetation from its supply chain by the end of 2025.
An important enabler of the group’s biodiversity conservation and decarbonisation targets, the commitment is in continuity with initiatives like the creation of a dedicated Carbon Solutions Platform.

The merchant and processor of agricultural goods also recently introduced product-specific sustainability codes and policies to conserve forests and native vegetation for commodities considered to be higher risk in relation to deforestation – namely, palm oil, coffee and soy.

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The European Commission’s Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy, unveiled in May 2020​, aims to engage all players along the supply chain – from, as the name suggests, farm-to-fork.

In an effort to improve human and planetary health, the Commission has set a host of actions directed at the agricultural sector. These include reduction targets for chemical and hazardous pesticides, and fertilisers, as well as improved animal welfare.

On the fork side of things, targets will be set to reduce food loss and waste, and plans are underway to bring in a mandatory and harmonised front-of-pack (FOP) labelling scheme.

Is this enough to ensure consumers are onboard with the strategy? Because as MEPs argued at a European Food Forum (EFF) event last week, much of the success of the F2F lies in consumers’ hands.

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German Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir has joined the European Commission in dubbing agriculture a security issue. Making agriculture more sustainable and resilient is an important step towards more independence from Russia, he said in an address to German lawmakers.

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Farmers are being inundated with opportunities and news surrounding climate-smart agriculture, and there are opportunities there. But there's also a challenge. The complexity of agriculture and its interaction with the climate makes measuring actions more challenging. One public-private program aimed at tackling this data challenge is AgMission.

"The ag community and industry sector are all working in the area, creating sustainability goals and working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," says Sally Rockey, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR). "They're working from company sourcing to new science in the area and other efforts. How can we bring the whole community together and accelerate what they're doing?"

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