Glencore Agriculture saw its attributable share of profits for 2018 drop by 79% on year to USD 21 million in 2018. This was due to smaller grains and sugarcane crops in Australia, Argentina and Brazil, lower margins as well as issues related to the US/China trade war. The group’s Canadian handling operations did well, on the other hand, thanks to what Glencore called its “best-in-class efficiency and service.”
Glencore Agri, as well as COFCO, announced they were now part of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and its Soft Commodities Forum (SCF). COFCO’s chairman argued that the world’s food system needed to be transformed to improve diets and help farmers and the environment. As part of WBCSD’s goal of finding ways to feed the world sustainably, members of the Soft Commodities Forum – including Louis Dreyfus, ADM, Bunge and Cargill – said this week they would step up their commitment to increase transparency and traceability in Brazil’s soy supply chain.
Cargill has applied to patent a ‘high protein egg chip’ in a bid to offer a low-fat snacking alternative. The company said that snacking was becoming increasingly common, often replacing meals and that people wanted healthier options. In the Netherlands, the company is investing USD 23 million in its instant starch production facility to meet growing demand from the ready meals, sauces and soups’ segments.
Nestle announced a plan to start selling some 24 Starbucks products as part of what the CEO called “meaningful innovation.” A Forbes analyst pointed out that this was part of a wider strategy to adapt faster to change as activists and hedge funds are becoming increasingly vocal. FAIRR, for instance, which is a network representing investors worth a combined USD 11 trillion, sent letters to the world’s main fast food companies last month asking them to address climate risk in their supply chain.“Companies often respond quickly when large shareholders are asking them questions. Private sector and institutional investors are a huge lever of change,” a FAIRR official said.
Campbell Soup, too, has been under pressure from stakeholders to become more resilient and sustainable. The group teamed up with Land O’Lakes last year and launched a digital platform that collects data from farmers to help them become more efficient. Campbell expects that sustainability will help reduce costs in the long run. However, a group of experts warned that most of the world’s agricultural data was in the hands of a few multinationals, which increased the risks of conflict of interests as well as marginalised smaller players. They said policies were needed to ensure that the merger of big agricultural companies, especially seed companies, did not also lead to the “over-consolidation of farm data.”
The EU is spending the equivalent of 20% of its total budget encouraging livestock farming, according to research by Greenpeace. Europeans already consume twice as much meat and dairy as they should, the NGO pointed out, arguing that the funds would be better used to encourage grass-fed livestock as well as fruit and vegetable production. However, a source from the Commission disagreed with the numbers, adding that the funds were also used to save family farm models and not necessarily encourage industrialised farming. Also, the farmers’ association Copa Cogeca said that lower domestic meat production would not lead to a drop in meat consumption but rather to a rise in imports.
A recent FAO study suggests that livestock is, in fact, a very good way of converting forages which are not fit for human consumption into an important source of protein and nutrients. The study found that almost 90% of what is fed to livestock is inedible for humans and that a big part of the grazing areas is unusable to grow crops. Looking at dairy, total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have increased by 18% between 2005-2015, but emissions per kilo of milk have actually fallen by 11% in the same period thanks to improved efficiency. Researchers in Canada, meanwhile, are trying to correlate the amount of methane emitted in cow burps with the cow’s DNA in a bid to breed cows that produce less methane.
Taking it a step further, the tech company behind SellMyLivestock (SML) just launched “Tudder,” an app designed to help farmers find the right cow by using a model similar to the dating app Tinder. The group’s CEO explained that it used data to help predict whether this would be a good match, including the kind of offsprings the cow is likely to have.
The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) thinks the EU is unlikely to meet its target of using only sustainable palm oil by 2020. IDH explained that palm oil has become such a sensitive topic that food companies are even wary of using the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) logo to avoid attracting attention to the fact they use palm oil at all.
Finally, after eating expired food for a year without falling sick, the head of MOM’s Organic Market called for an overhaul of the “vague and inconsistent” regulations used to determine ”best by” dates. This corroborates a survey in the US which showed that consumers are confused about food date
This summary was produced by ECRUU
