Accelerating sustainable trade

Tags: Small Producers Agency

What will the world look like in 2050? The long-term trends of population growth, climate change and increasing consumption per capita are not likely to change any time soon, resulting in accelerating pressures on natural resources such as soils and forest. Current increases in agricultural production are mainly based on the expansion of agricultural area – a process that causes great damage already and moreover will have exhausted its possibilities in the very near future. Sustainable intensification of agricultural production is the only way out. Sustainability will soon not be a voluntary option of ‘green’ companies anymore; it will be the only option left for any responsible production and trade.

This was the background of a congress called Accelerating Sustainable Trade, initiated by IDH, AkzoNobel and NEVI, held on November 2 in the Netherlands. “There is no future but a sustainable future” was one of its slogans.

Governments, consumers, civil society, farmers and business (producers, traders, retailers) all interact in the creation of sustainable value chains. It was remarkable that in the congress, this phenomenon of shared responsibility was not used to shift responsibility away from business to other actors, but that business was seen as a essential ‘lead agent’ in the process of sustainable production. Green consumers are important, government regulation is necessary to create level playing fields, NGOs may act to keep actors to their promises but in the end it will be us, the business community, that will make the quantum leap towards a sustainable world a reality.

This implies that corporations will have to invest in all parties of the value chain, including the farmers. Grains, meat, timber, coffee, cacao, cotton or soy – any product links consumers to producers. Challenges discussed during the conference includes, for instance:
* Everybody needs to get on board: co-ownership of all stakeholders along the chain.
* Transparency and traceability in the value chain.
* Sustainability should become a license to operate in the future at all.
* Co-operation instead of competition! We need a new business paradigm.

Cooperation along the value chain implies a strategy for poverty reduction of the smallholder-producers. ‘Survival farmers’ will not be able to make the investments needed to cross over from expansive-unsustainable land use to sustainable production. Without support, survival farmers can only continue what they are doing already – or quit farming and end up in the urban proletariat.

Many companies are working already on becoming more sustainable, as indicated for instance by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Mars company aims at using cacao totally certified as sustainably produced by 2020. Cargill company works on farming field schools and the professionalisation of smallholder cooperatives. Coffee farmers have been able to raise profitability and sustainability at the same time. As said during the congress: “There are two types of companies: those that are sustainable and those that will be”.

Looking back on the conference, we may note that enthusiastic international corporations is not yet the same as inclusive improvement, local ownership or participatory certification. Enthusiastic corporations may, however, form a platform to reach these higher goals. Jointly with them work on long term financing of farmers, for instance, may become possible.

The Dutch minister Koenders pledged an extra 20 million for sustainable trade. For more information, click here.