Demand-Side Actors in Agricultural Supply Chain Sustainability: An Assessment of Motivations for Action, Implementation Challenges, and Research Frontiers
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Demand-Led Action for Agricultural Supply Chain Sustainability
3. Methods
4. Results
4.1. Motivations for End Buyer Companies in Sub-National Environmental Sustainability Information
“Do I really care where in North America it’s from at the moment? […] No, not really, because there’s no one in civil society or NGOs that’s really telling me that there’s a problem [related to deforestation]”(R4)
“As […] a company that depends on agriculture we have to be aware of what our [environmental] impacts are, and we have to work to mitigate them if we want to be prepared for the future states of the world and food growing in the world”(M1)
4.2. Solutions Which Need More Support from Science in This Field
4.2.1. Commodity Trade in Complex Supply Chains
“Corn that’s grown in the United States, we can probably classify that as a pretty low risk that we don’t need to worry too much about and we don’t therefore need huge, great controls in place to manage the sustainability of that production. It’s also from a country that’s got probably a lot of controls and checks in place already”(M4)
4.2.2. Certification to Improve Production Practices
“If you look at [company internal certification], for example all of the RSPO things: They are all about the action you should take, and not measuring the outcomes of those actions. So, there is then the belief that sustainably sourced equals better or lower impact, [but] that’s not necessarily proven”(M2)
“Actually, they [end-buyers] buy RSPO. Then RSPO is not available for others. Then it doesn’t change anything. Plus, if you actually look at what’s happening in Indonesia then: ‘Okay, there’s RSPO certified palm oil’, but then you have these mass balances and you actually don’t know where the food comes from and whether there was deforestation and so forth”(C4)
4.2.3. Directing Investment to Landscapes
“There’s nothing you can do about it because it’s legal deforestation anyway and the only way you are going to stop that is the financial incentive and that’s why we made this […] announcement in the Cerrado region in Brazil”(R4)
4.3. Priority Concerns
4.3.1. Environmental Sustainability: The Need to Balance Complexity and Simplicity
“I think largely to the climate change agenda that’s been really simplified, and in terms of environmental sustainability most retailers we work with […], that’s now only just collapsed down to deforestation”(C1)
“Any kind of methods that combines several sustainability aspects is good. Because otherwise you sit with different tools for every different type of aspect. So, I also understand that there’s a bigger complexity the more aspects you include, but if you manage to do so, it becomes a more valid tool”(R3)
“We are entering sort of an era where we have gone from trying to really make the complex super simple […] just to be able to do something because if we make it too complex then we […] don’t dare to do anything. But I think we are entering from that simplification era to actually […] acknowledge that this is a complex situation”(R3)
Actor Type | Complexity |
---|---|
Manufacturer | “So a tool, if it only did greenhouse gas calculations and land use change, then that might be fine for some, but the more that it can do on top of that the better probably” (M2). |
Retailer | “If we make it too complex [multiple indicators], then we don’t do anything, we don’t dare to do anything. But I think we are entering from that simplification era to actually go into and acknowledge that this is a complex situation. […] I do think that there is a lot of here, there is a lot more need for research guidance” (R4). |
NGO | “I mean ideally absolutely we want people to look at all of these metrics […] but it gets very complicated […]. So, what we need is enough data that guides companies in the right direction without bogging them down in detail, right?” (NGO4). |
Consultant | “When we use GHG reduction as the sole, or deciding, indicator of a sustainable food system, it leaves us at risk of failing to address other critical aspects of food system sustainability. Soil health and biodiversity are key metrics gaps towards achieving the desired outcome of sustainable food systems” (C3). |
Certifiers | “I would say try to avoid too comprehensive analyses—it is not worth the effort as there is so much uncertainty” (CB3). |
Scientific expert | “I like to joke that the Anthropocene, is really the ANDthropocene—that we need to be much better about recognizing the impacts of food on health AND hunger AND water AND biodiversity AND land AND climate. We’re not there yet and I find that people are unable to understand multiple issues and their interactions” (Scientific Director, EAT Lancet). |
4.3.2. Beyond the Biophysical Environment: Social Sustainability
“I think there are two big issues when a company starts the process of certification. First, they want to solve the risk of deforestation in their supply chain. After that, they are asking about social aspects, like poor communities’ projects, improvement in labor conditions and biodiversity on the farm”(CB1)
“The social versus the environmental trade-offs are the biggest ones […] But we find that if we stop doing business with them, the consequence to vulnerable people either working for that business or linked to that business would be so great that we may still have to work with that business. Because if we would stop doing business with them, the vulnerable people would be even more vulnerable”(R4)
4.4. Limitations of Existing Science and Tools to Advance Sustainability
4.4.1. Scale: Focus on Own Supply Chain vs. Change at Scale
“Being able to prove to the world that you are actually eliminating deforestation from your supply chain that there is actually stuff going on there that you can measure and count and report against”(M4)
“So, it’s a really, really tricky balance for companies who we are asking two things: You have to be squeaky clean but you also have to work in tough places you can’t just [buy from long deforested places]. So, what should they be doing: they should be doing both: making sure that their supply chain is clean and driving clean suppliers”(N4)
“There’s generally a total lack of evidence in terms of impact and performance. I don’t find that difficult to understand because the cost of these sorts of things is enormous”(M2)
4.4.2. Temporal Scales
“A lot of the information and the metrics that are available have […] issues with […] time-lag: a lot of the data that is used is very static. So, something like Trase is not really that useful to have something that happened last year. You could have accepted hundreds of tons of deforestation associated into your supply chain before the next version of Trase or things that have that sort of slow renewal time come out”(C1)
“They [end-buyers] see in their new real-time monitoring system that in the surrounding of the units where they buy from forest is being cleared. But what do you do with that information? First, it’s not linked with your supply base because at the time that the tree is being cut down, there is nothing going there. So, it is not within your supply base. […] And secondly […], as long as there is no one on the ground [from the end-buyer company] to investigate and to do something about it and to understand the drivers, it’s impossible to stop deforestation”(N3)
“I can pay vast sums of money and spend huge amounts of time, but will the quality of the answer be any better than a screening type of approach, given the level of uncertainty that exists in the data and the level of changes that are likely to occur?”(M2)
4.4.3. Meaningful Metrics
“carbon impact is relevant especially in the future, where more and more companies will be setting Science-Based Targets and clear their Scope 3 emissions in the supply chain. […] I know that some retailers are already doing that, and I imagine that we at some point will as well look into that”(R5)
4.5. Collaboration to Tackle Systemic Challenges
“The way at least I see it […] is that the more clarity we have on each supply chain actor responsibility and capability, the easier it will be to attribute and to share the responsibility across a supply chain”(N1)
“We are not prescriptive in terms of saying ‘here is the solution’, because of their country and their own industry. But we recognize we have a role to play as a company that ends up using the soy in our supply chain. We can be part of the solution, [and] help fund the solutions, even though they are the ones that need to take ownership of it locally, because we can’t be seen as dictating the terms, and because countries—especially Brazil—are very sensitive about their sovereignty”(R4)
“We have the Amazon Moratorium that drives leakage to the Cerrado. If you do the Cerrado Conservation Mechanism, is that gonna drive leakage to the Gran Chaco? And then if you’re saying your soy is deforestation-free within the specific geographic bounds where it’s happened, but is it in the wider sense?”.(R5)
5. Discussion
5.1. Implications for Science
5.2. Implications for Practice
5.3. Limitations and Further Research on Supply Chain Stakeholder Needs
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Type of Actor | Number and Type of Data Gathering Method (Interviews/Focus Group Discussions) | Number of Organizations | Number and Type of Participant |
---|---|---|---|
Phase 1 | Companies | ||
Manufacturers (M) 1 | 5 interviews and 1 focus group discussion | 4 | 6 (Sustainability Manager/Director, Sustainable Sourcing Manager/Director) |
European retailer (R) | 5 interviews | 5 | 5 (Sustainability Manager, Sustainable Sourcing Managers, CSR Manager) |
Phase 2 | NGOs | ||
European-centred NGO | 3 interviews | 3 | 3 (Program Managers) |
Global NGO (N) | 1 interview and 1 focus group discussion | 1 | 4 (Sustainability Directors, Program Managers) |
Phase 3 | Data providers | ||
Consultancies (C) | 4 interviews | 4 | 4 (Sustainability Consultants, Partner) |
Certification bodies (CB) | 3 interviews | 3 | 3 (Program Managers, Director) |
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Mueller, C.; West, C.; Bastos Lima, M.G.; Doherty, B. Demand-Side Actors in Agricultural Supply Chain Sustainability: An Assessment of Motivations for Action, Implementation Challenges, and Research Frontiers. World 2023, 4, 569-588. https://doi.org/10.3390/world4030035
Mueller C, West C, Bastos Lima MG, Doherty B. Demand-Side Actors in Agricultural Supply Chain Sustainability: An Assessment of Motivations for Action, Implementation Challenges, and Research Frontiers. World. 2023; 4(3):569-588. https://doi.org/10.3390/world4030035
Chicago/Turabian StyleMueller, Carina, Christopher West, Mairon G. Bastos Lima, and Bob Doherty. 2023. "Demand-Side Actors in Agricultural Supply Chain Sustainability: An Assessment of Motivations for Action, Implementation Challenges, and Research Frontiers" World 4, no. 3: 569-588. https://doi.org/10.3390/world4030035