This text is sponsored by Syngenta Group.
Nobody can severely query the massively constructive position that agriculture performs in our societies, from feeding the world’s 8 billion individuals to using some 26 % of the worldwide workforce. There’s, nonetheless, an inclination to imagine that each one agricultural inputs akin to fertilizers, seeds and crop safety merchandise or different supplies to extend agricultural yields are unhealthy for the setting.
This incomplete (and inaccurate) notion ignores two vital truths: that over the past six many years agriculture, with the assistance of know-how, has been feeding a fast-growing world inhabitants with very restricted improve of land beneath manufacturing; and that agricultural applied sciences are highly effective levers for lowering farming’s impression on the setting — by decreasing the sector’s carbon footprint or water use, for instance.
Sure seed remedies, soil remedies and sprays scale back farmers’ reliance on resource-intensive actions akin to irrigation or fertilization. Different improvements could make it simpler for farmers to observe regenerative agriculture, which might improve soil well being, scale back erosion and promote biodiversity. And fashionable pesticides can scale back carbon footprints by decrease use charges and fewer functions.
Most importantly, each product, observe and repair that maximizes the productiveness of present farmland helps to cut back the possibilities that farmers might want to clear further forests or vegetation. In spite of everything, the world inhabitants is projected to develop to nearly 10 billion individuals by 2050.
In distinction to the vitality and transportation industries, the place the very best factor we might do for our planet can be to cut back their use, we all know that we should dramatically improve meals manufacturing. The United Nations Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO) estimates that by 2050, we’ll have to produce 60 % extra meals — even in eventualities the place protein consumption is diversified, and meals loss and waste is reduce. Inhabitants and financial progress, altering dietary preferences, with individuals consuming extra animal-based merchandise, fruits, greens and processed meals, all of which require extra assets, and urbanization with its elevated demand for extra various and resource-intensive meals are only a few explanation why meals demand will proceed to develop exponentially.
Transparency and accountability
Syngenta Group has spent the previous two years creating a software it’s calling the Portfolio Sustainability Framework (PSF), which measures the way it helps farmers obtain increased yields with much less impression whereas additionally measuring the sustainability of its personal operations. Its efforts had been pushed by the notion that one thing might be higher managed and improved provided that it may be measured.
It was impressed by the Portfolio Sustainability Evaluation (PSA) framework used throughout the chemical trade, developed by the World Enterprise Council for Sustainable Growth (WBCSD) and forward-thinking chemical firms.
By way of the PSF, Syngenta’s complete product portfolio will get systematically mapped out throughout two key dimensions: sustainability advantages and stakeholder alignment. The aim is to encourage the continual growth of merchandise and options that not solely supply elevated sustainability advantages to clients and society at massive, but in addition align with key stakeholder expectations by way of carbon footprint and ecological profile.
The PSF charges a specific product for a particular crop in a given geography, for instance, an insect management product as used for corn in the USA. The PSF scores the yield profit, carbon footprint and environmental rating of that product and consolidates these into an general ranking.
Syngenta has rated shut to twenty,000 product/crop/geography combos alongside the PSF dimensions. Its rankings are primarily based on hundreds of thousands of information factors, from inner sources akin to gross sales figures, product label data and carbon footprint estimations to exterior sources, together with farmer panel information from Kynetec and the Discipline EIQ scores decided by Cornell School of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Services and products with the best sustainability advantages, in addition to the strongest stakeholder alignment, are categorized as Tier 1; these with reasonable or increased stakeholder alignment as Tier 2, and the remaining ones with decrease stakeholder alignment as Tier 3. Syngenta’s ambition is to develop the portion of Tier 1 merchandise as a lot as doable. The portfolio presently beneath evaluation represents gross sales totaling $16 billion in 2023.
Because it refines and develops services, Tier 1 would be the firm’s North Star. The PSF provides Syngenta a option to maintain itself accountable and gives its enterprise leaders with tangible metrics to systematically incorporate sustainability issues into their choices.
The PSF strongly will increase Syngenta’s portfolio reporting transparency in the direction of traders and different stakeholders, at a time the share of gross sales generated with sustainable merchandise is more and more (and rightly) vital to them. The PSF course of, aggregated outcomes (the share of merchandise falling into every tier), and any methodological modifications will probably be voluntarily printed, and externally audited, yearly.
More practical and extra aligned with stakeholder expectations
Creating the PSF was definitely not simple. Over two years, Syngenta delved into reams of information and consulted with stakeholders together with ESG ranking businesses, ESG-focused monetary analysts, banks, NGOs akin to The Nature Conservancy and Solidaridad, and guidance-setting our bodies such because the World Enterprise Council for Sustainable Growth. It additionally realized from present instruments, metrics and frameworks used all through the agriculture trade, such because the Cool Farm Device, FAO SAFRA, World Farm Metrics, SAI Platform Farm Sustainability Evaluation and World Benchmarking Alliance.
The corporate had intense discussions with inner stakeholders. It was vital to construct the belief that merchandise can be precisely rated and that this train was not meant to single out particular person merchandise, however moderately to maneuver the general portfolio to a greater place. Altogether, it was an in depth endeavor. However sustainability is critically vital, and Syngenta knew it wanted to get this proper.
As policymakers and advocacy teams search to carry firms accountable for his or her impression on the planet and its individuals, I’d encourage different firms to embrace methodologies that price their merchandise’ sustainability profiles and that facilitate inner decision-making in favor of a complete method to sustainability. This strengthens a company’s understanding of buyer and stakeholder expectations, which ends up in larger innovation and, finally, extra sustainable portfolios.
Tackling local weather change isn’t easy, however the agriculture trade has a vital position to play. That’s why Syngenta has positioned the PSF on the core of its enterprise mannequin. In spite of everything, what will get measured will get managed.
