How responsible sourcing benefits your business & the planet

Team Cropin
January 15, 2024
11 min read

Quick Summary:

Here, we discuss the critical importance of responsible sourcing in agriculture to address environmental, social, and ethical considerations, emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift in sourcing practices for a sustainable future. We explore the need for change, challenges, benefits, strategies, and the emergence of responsible sourcing regulations globally. Highlighting the role of responsible sourcing in ensuring transparency and building brand reputation and the need for businesses to proactively integrate responsible sourcing for long-term viability.

For decades, feeding the world has been a precarious balancing act. The soaring 20th-century population fueled a demand for food that intensified in the 21st century with the wrath of climate change. While farmers and agri-businesses have boosted per capita calories, global agri-food systems have contributed to one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.

Meeting our food, fuel, and fiber needs without devastating the planet demands fundamental shifts in how we source. Responsible sourcing emerges as a critical solution, mandating a paradigm shift in procuring for the new sustainable era.

What is responsible sourcing

Responsible sourcing is an approach to procurement that prioritizes environmental, social, and ethical considerations throughout the supply chain. It goes beyond ensuring quality and cost-effectiveness to focus on the impacts of sourcing decisions on communities and the planet.

Why do we need responsible sourcing measures?

Conventional agricultural practices often focus on quality and cost efficiency, generating significant environmental and social issues:

Environmental impact:

Agriculture can have significant environmental consequences, including deforestation, water overuse & pollution, and soil degradation. These threaten long-term agricultural productivity and ecosystem health. While the discussions at COP28 and the World Economic Forum highlighted ambitious goals for climate action and sustainable food systems, responsible sourcing emerges as a critical, tangible solution to translate these goals into reality.

Labor practices:

Ensuring fair labor practices throughout the supply chain is crucial. Issues such as child labor, poor working conditions, land grabs, and unfair wages can be prevalent in some regions, requiring careful monitoring and intervention.

Pollution:

Excessive use of chemicals and pesticides can contaminate water & soil. This results in detrimental effects on ecosystems, human health, and biodiversity. Monitoring precision agriculture practices that minimize the use of harmful chemicals is vital to mitigate pollution.

Climate change resilience:

Climate change poses a threat to agriculture through unpredictable weather patterns, increased temperatures, and extreme events. Promoting climate-smart agricultural practices to enhance resilience is the key.

Biodiversity conservation:

Agricultural activities can contribute to the loss of biodiversity. Emphasizing practices that protect and promote biodiversity, such as agro-ecological approaches, can help conservation.

Leading food and agriculture players are pledging action through Science Based Targets initiatives (SBTi). According to McKinsey, their top priorities now include Eating sustainably – a direct consequence of responsible sourcing, alongside Building land value beyond crops, Bio-innovation, ESG transparency, and Waste reduction.

Responsible sourcing emerges as the answer to these challenges. By consciously making informed sourcing decisions that prioritize environmental and social responsibility, we can build a stronger, more sustainable future for agriculture.

Challenges in agriculture sourcing

From a responsible perspective, some of the biggest challenges in agricultural sourcing are:

Fragmentation: Numerous smallholder farmers with diverse practices make it difficult to track ingredients back to specific origins. Ensuring sustainable agricultural practices throughout cultivation and tracking is a huge challenge.

Lack of information: Data about farm practices, labor conditions, and environmental impact is often limited or inaccessible, hindering responsible sourcing decisions.

Supply chain transparency: Many agricultural supply chains are complex and involve multiple intermediaries. Maintaining transparency throughout the supply chain means integrating data silos and democratizing data. It is a critical challenge essential for identifying and addressing issues related to responsible sourcing.

Regulatory compliance: Meeting and enforcing responsible sourcing standards necessitates compliance with local and international regulations. Lack of regulatory frameworks or weak enforcement can hinder efforts to ensure responsible sourcing in agriculture.

Overcoming these challenges in responsible sourcing requires a multi-pronged approach involving collaboration between governments, NGOs, businesses, and consumers. Strategies should focus on:

Investing in last mile digitization, traceability technologies and information systems.
Developing responsible sourcing standards and certifications.
Promoting fair trade practices and fair pricing for farmers.
Implementing and monitoring sustainable agricultural practices to minimize deforestation and environmental impact.
Raising consumer awareness and demand for responsibly sourced products.
Improving infrastructure and market access for smallholder farmers by solving the information asymmetry that is a barrier.

How does responsible sourcing work?

Responsible sourcing transcends compliance as a proactive commitment to build a robust supply chain that mitigates risk and avoids harm. It is grounded in globally recognized principles and measurable compliance criteria. This commitment manifests at three crucial levels:

Pillars of responsible sourcing

Prevention – cultivating a culture of integrity: Responsible sourcing begins with proactive measures to address potential pitfalls. Businesses implement clear, well-defined practices, foster close supplier relationships, and actively promote a culture of integrity across their value chains.

Detection – ensuring transparency, active monitoring: Transparency is the cornerstone of an effective detection system. Responsible sourcing involves establishing a clear framework for data-driven decision-making. Potential risks can be identified and addressed swiftly by digitizing, monitoring, and utilizing available data. This proactive approach ensures early detection and minimizes the potential for harm.

Response – swift and effective risk mitigation: Responding promptly and effectively to potential violations is critical to responsible sourcing. Robust policies and readily available tools ensure thorough investigations and swift corrective action whenever necessary. This decisive approach demonstrates a commitment to accountability and reinforces the integrity of the entire supply chain.

Responsible sourcing builds a foundation of trust and integrity, protecting reputations and fostering stronger relationships with stakeholders across the supply chain.

Tenets of responsible sourcing

Traceability to source: Traceability is crucial considering the fragile nature of global supply chains. Responsible sourcing claims gain credibility when the origin of the produce is transparently disclosed. Complex upstream journeys involving smallholder farmers require digitization. Farm management from seed to harvest, with timestamps for multiple processes, provides a precise picture of origin. This intricate upstream journey must then be seamlessly connected to midstream and downstream partners to unlock the end-to-end transformative power of traceability. Only when traceability is seamlessly connected across all stages does it reveal its full power, sealing accountability, responsibility and trust into every step.

Transparent & measurable compliance: Credibility lies in clarity. Responsible sourcing demands demonstrable data points on procurement adhering to transparent, readily measurable criteria aligned with internationally recognized best practices. This unwavering commitment to clarity extends beyond mere declarations – it manifests in the seamless exchange of data at every critical touchpoint, where crops change hands and journeys converge. Only then can true accountability and trust be woven into the fabric of global supply chains.

Sucafina’s work in Tanzania with IMPACT verification exemplifies this principle in action. By empowering farmers with tools to demonstrate their adherence to human rights, environmental protection, and sustainable practices, they bridge the gap between intention and impact, ensuring the sustainability of coffee production.

Assurance mechanism: Validating Trust/ Building trust requires evidence. Responsible sourcing relies on a multifaceted approach to data assurance, integrating supplier assessments, document verification, and even field audits. At the forefront of this lies agri-intelligence powered by AI and ML models. These models analyze data from diverse sources, such as satellite imagery, weather patterns, and sensor networks, to provide near real-time insights and automated anomaly detection. It empowers responsible sourcing to further validate information through satellite imagery and timestamped near real-time data for accurate monitoring, solidifying trust, and minimizing potential discrepancies. This synergy of human intervention with AI-driven intelligence guarantees data integrity, ensuring responsible sourcing translates into tangible action.

Benefits of responsible sourcing?

Following are some of the benefits of responsible sourcing:

Reduced environmental impact: Responsible sourcing fights climate change by minimizing deforestation and pollution by promoting sustainable farming, soil conservation, and efficient resource management.
Increased supply-chain traceability: A clear end-to-end traceability empowers consumers to choose ethically sourced products and holds producers accountable for responsible practices.
Protected forests: By reducing deforestation and illegal logging, responsible sourcing safeguards biodiversity, regulates climate, and protects precious ecosystems for future generations.
Enhanced brand reputation: Commitment to ethical practices and sustainability through responsible sourcing builds consumer trust and loyalty, giving brands a competitive edge.
Certified transparency: Responsible sourcing champions clear and verifiable sustainability standards, providing assurance to regulators and customers and driving continuous improvement within the industry.

Regulations and initiatives driving responsible sourcing

The tide is turning towards responsible sourcing as numerous regulations and initiatives gain momentum worldwide. From regional legislation to international frameworks, these efforts aim to reshape supply chains and minimize environmental and social footprints.

Regional regulations addressing responsible sourcing and sustainability

European union deforestation regulation (EUDR) in europe:
Taking a bold groundbreaking step, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), effective December 2024, prohibits companies from placing deforestation-linked commodities on the EU market. This ambitious regulation is a precedent for responsible sourcing of products that risk deforestation, setting a high bar for efforts worldwide.
Tackling forced labor and environmental concerns in united states:
The Forced Labor Order and Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act targets unethical practices within supply chains. It addresses the critical issue of forced labor, particularly in imports, demonstrating a commitment to ethical sourcing practices. Additionally, individual states actively pass legislation on conflict minerals, deforestation, and sustainable palm oil, showcasing a diverse and proactive approach.
Modern slavery acts in canada and australia:
Canada’s Modern Slavery Act requires companies to report their efforts in combating modern slavery within their supply chains. This fosters transparency and accountability for businesses operating in Canada. Australia’s Modern Slavery Act mandates companies to report on modern slavery risks and mitigation strategies. It highlights the growing focus on ethical sourcing.
Green certification system in china:
Green Supply Chain Management Certification System incentivizes responsible sourcing practices in China by awarding certifications to companies that meet environmental and social criteria. This market-driven approach promotes responsible sourcing within the Chinese market.

Global actions addressing responsible sourcing and sustainability

Multilateral agreements:
UN Strategic Plan for Forests, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, The Convention on Biological Diversity and its Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework are some of the multilateral agreements tackling broader environmental challenges with implications for responsible sourcing. They provide robust frameworks for countries and businesses to align their practices with sustainable development goals.
UN guiding principles on business and human rights:
Offering a practical roadmap for companies, these principles lay a foundation for respecting human rights throughout operations and supply chains.
International labour organization (ILO) work in forced labour:
The ILO plays a crucial role in setting international standards on forced labor and supporting compliance efforts, empowering businesses to uphold ethical practices.
Global forest watch partnership:
This initiative empowers responsible sourcing through accurate data and tools for monitoring deforestation and promoting sustainable forest management.

Although not exhaustive, this glimpse into the evolving landscape of regulations and initiatives highlights the growing global commitment to responsible sourcing. As these efforts coalesce, businesses have a unique opportunity to adapt their practices, ensuring a more sustainable and equitable future for all.

Responsible Sourcing is more than compliance; it’s about future-proofing business operations, enhancing brand reputation, and ensuring long-term viability.

EUDR sets a precedent as a defining moment, making responsible sourcing an immediate imperative. Agri-businesses must prioritize it, integrating responsible sourcing into their plans and setting clear performance milestones for the months ahead.

Conclusion

Just as the “Amazon Effect” redefined convenience, EUDR could redefine our collective conscience. With 90% of Gen X willing to pay more for sustainable products, businesses can no longer afford to ignore this shift. Responsible sourcing isn’t just a future trend; it’s the present imperative. The EUDR’s clarion call for transparency echoes this urgency, raising the bar for responsible sourcing globally.