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Löfbergs was founded in 1906 by the brothers Anders, John and Josef Löfberg. They began roasting their own coffee in Karlstad in 1911. Today, the company is one of the Nordic region’s biggest family-owned coffee businesses, producing the equivalent of more than 10 million cups of coffee every day. Löfbergs is still fully owned by the Löfberg family, now in its third and fourth generations.

 I spoke with Martin Löfberg, one of that fourth generation and head of procurement for the company. I asked him what that role entailed.

I spend a lot of time in the coffee origin countries. Out of the twelve years I have spent with the company, I reckon I have travelled for one year of that. I have especially been focusing on the co-operative side, Fairtrade, organic and Rainforest Alliance certified cooperatives, mainly in Central and South America.

On a daily basis I do a lot of cupping: three times a day for a total of 300 cups. That’s an important part of my role. It allows me to be actively involved and not just manage the procurement process from a distance. It is important for me to be inside the flow. It allows me to keep an ear to the rail tracks, to listen to what’s going on, to understand the challenges in producing countries, and to stay on top of how our farmers and partners are doing. Although it may sound counterintuitive, being hands-on allows me to look at the business in a more strategic way.

Throughout my day, I also have to keep on top of the coffee price and follow the futures markets.

What percentage of your coffee do you buy against the futures and what percentage on a flat price?

We buy close to 99 percent of our coffee on a differential basis against the futures. We only buy our speciality coffees on a flat price.

About 15-20 percent of the coffee that we buy is Fairtrade. For a number of years now world prices have been low, and these purchases have been at the Fairtrade minimum price. These coffees are priced on a differential basis, but a minimum price applies. It is 140 cents per pound for washed arabicas, with a 30-cent premium for organic, plus a 20-cent social premium. That gives a minimum price of 190 cents, to which you may have to add a quality premium.

In the past three years the world price has been higher than that for only one day – in December 2019! Apart from that one day, the Fairtrade minimum price has applied.

When you buy coffee, do you buy with a particular blend in mind, or do you sometimes buy a coffee and work out where to put it later?

Some consumers like a consistent taste profile over the seasons and over the years. If a new-found coffee fits into our blends, we are happy to introduce it. However, we operate on a more strategic basis for the blends. The blend drives the coffee.

This is not as easy as it sounds; every new crop is a new page in a book. It’s never the same as the previous crop, and it takes a long time to get an understanding of that. It takes at least five years to become a rookie in this business. It’s always changing. So, for the blends we continually try to be proactive and to see how the crops are coming out, and what qualities are being produced. We have a very narrow tolerance in our blends.

Some consumers like to buy specific origins or regions, or single estates or even single lots, part of an estate. Sometimes, we come across something that is really unique. When we do, we buy it and then test it through our two coffee shops, which are a little bit our centres for innovation, to see if the consumers like it.

There’s a treasure chest of findings throughout my travels that I have been able to introduce.  We are able to use our big flows of coffees to put a few bags inside a container to make it easier for us to import.

Some people have complained that there’s too many certification agencies. Have you found this?

We don’t really see this as a problem, particularly with the merger that is now under way between UTZ and Rainforest Alliance. The merger should be completed by 2022, but from 1^st July 2020 you can cross-use coffees from farms and estates under both.

We are in favour of the merger as it can be a challenge for farmers to handle too many standards. It’s costly for them to be part of a certification scheme, not just in money but also in time. It is also confusing from the consumer side. Having too many certification standards dilutes the picture.

However, having more than one certifying agency means having access to a wider market. UTZ and Rainforest Alliance were quite similar in their standards.

Fairtrade is different because of their focus on the premium and the minimum price. They are strong from a social perspective. Then you have the organic coffees which are very strong from an environmental perspective.

Rainforest Alliance and UTZ operate on the bigger farms where Fairtrade doesn’t operate. So, Fairtrade is small scale, while Rainforest Alliance / UTZ can be applied on a bigger scale.

We see certification as important, and one of many tools, but for us the Löfbergs brand is more important. Our brand is the guarantee and the trust from consumers and partners that we build into it. Certification symbols and so forth are sometimes important for consumers, but Löfbergs is the true seal.

What’s your favourite type of coffee? And how do you prepare it?

It depends on the day and the time of day! My most common technique is to self-grind and then use a filter. But I also use a French press and an Aeropress.

As for which coffee I prefer, it’s like choosing between your kids. It’s impossible! I do have my favourite espresso though. It’s a natural Brazilian one. If I don’t get it at least once a week I would die!

Many thanks Martin for your time and input!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is an extract of an interview that will be published later this year in my new book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Andrea Illy is Chairman of illycaffè S.p.A., a family-owned coffee business founded in Trieste in 1933. I spoke to him by telephone from Trieste and asked him about his family heritage.

My grandfather was Hungarian, but at the time of Austro-Hungarian empire. He lived most of his youth in Vienna; this is where he fell in love with coffee and where he decided that coffee was what he wanted to do in his life. When he came to Trieste, the city was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He started his coffee business with a Viennese heritage.

Trieste and my family share the same heritage: both started as Austro-Hungarian, but both became over the decades very much Italian. We nurture both. Our Italian heritage is about coffee and particularly expresso coffee. Our Austrian heritage is more about coffee as a hot drink: filter or café latté. We respect them both!

Why does illycaffè produce blended rather than single-origin coffee?

For three reasons:

Blending gives you the richness and the complexity of the aroma spectrum. If you listen to a single violinist, you can discern specific notes. However, if you listen to a symphony orchestra you get the richness and the complexity of the composition – the full spectrum of sounds. Blending is to coffee what a symphony orchestra is to music.

Blending gives you balance in the coffee. It enables you to compensate the disparities of the different origins. For example, Brazil is famous for its chocolatey aroma whereas Central America is famous for its flowery or fruity aroma. You can also compensate acidity with the bitterness, say, of a sun-dried coffee.

Blending gives you consistency. We want a product which is always of exactly the same quality.

You can only obtain these three fundamental attributes by blending. I don’t believe in pure origin. Pure origins are good as a kind of a tasting at a coffee experience, but if you are really seeking the best possible quality then it has to be a blend. Our blend is made of nine origins. Of course, the better the quality at origin the better the blend.

Could you tell me about your University of Coffee?

The University of Coffee is organized into three different departments: one for the growers;

one for the hospitality professionals; and one for coffee connoisseurs. For the last ten years we have run a master’s degree in coffee. We take twenty students from all over the world; they stay with us for six months.

We serve nearly 9 million cups of coffee per day. To make sure that each cup is as good as the last, we have to educate our farmers and we have to educate our baristas. But we also want to educate our consumers to appreciate coffee.

Coffee still has a long way to go to reach the same level of sophistication as exists in the wine industry. By that I mean sophistication in terms of product expertise: how you produce your wine and how you drink it.

I also mean sophistication in terms of narrative. A glass of wine in a restaurant will cost you a minimum of 6-8 euros, while a cup of coffee will cost you 2-3 euros. Coffee is as good as wine, and it should be as expensive as wine.

It is not good for your health to drink too much wine. But coffee makes you live better and longer. Coffee is a beverage of success: socially and professionally, and for your health.

My dream is to bring coffee culture to the same level of nobleness as premium wines. This means approaching coffee in a sophisticated way, and this is what we teach our students.

Is it your quality that enabled you to build the brand?

Yes, in order to build a successful brand, you need to have a narrative, an image, and a product. The question is, which comes first? Do you start with an incredible product that you narrate to the consumer, or do you start with a wonderful narrative that you then build the product around?  We were in the first case: we had this unique product; we started narrating the coffee culture, and we built our image, our point of difference and our credo around it.

illycaffè has been called the Armani of coffee. Is illycaffè a luxury brand?

It’s not a luxury brand. It is a high-end brand, what we call ‘altagamma’. ‘Luxury’ is more inaccessible and exclusive. Coffee is by its very nature inclusive. I’m proud to say that unwealthy people with a good palate can enjoy our coffee even though they pay a premium price for it.

Our coffee has all the paradigms of luxury – the superior quality and the savoir faire in both production and consumption. It has a wonderful image. It has everything that a luxury brand has except the exclusiveness. It is an inclusive product.

Your company motto is ‘Live Happily’. Could you please tell me a little about that?

Happiness has two philosophical definitions: one from Aristotle and one by Epicure. For Aristotle, happiness is living in a world of virtue, combining altruism, knowledge and wisdom – living for the greater good.

The Epicurean definition is about hedonism.  It is about the three pleasures in life: the natural necessary; the natural unnecessary; and the unnatural unnecessary. Epicure says that you should forget about the ‘unnatural unnecessary’; it will destroy you. You should be moderate with the ‘natural unnecessary’, but you should take full advantage of the natural necessary pleasure.

I consider coffee as a ‘natural unnecessary’ pleasure for the at least 1.5 billion coffee drinkers around the world – in terms of joy, in terms of energy, in terms of health, in terms of social life, in terms of mood.

And each cup that you drink helps the at least 25 million people in the coffee supply chains – people who depend on coffee for their human development and their quality of life. Most of these people live in poor countries and they have no alternative to coffee.  By taking your little treasure every day, several times a day, each time you know that you are helping a family in Ethiopia, or in Guatemala or wherever.

This is the dream of coffee.

Thank you, Andrea for your time and input!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is an extract of an interview that will be published in my upcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Jan Lühmann was until the end of May 2020 Global Head of Procurement for Jacobs Douwe Egberts. I spoke with him while he was on ‘gardening leave’ before becoming Co-CEO of Bernhard Rothfos, the Hamburg based mainstream trading arm of Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, in September 2020.

You’re one of the few people I’ve met who has moved from a merchandising role to a buying role, and then back to a merchandising role. What’s the main difference between merchants and roasters?

Technology, brand building and process are more important for a roaster than for a trader or merchant. Roasters focus a lot on technology, be it single serve, instant coffee or other proprietary USP’s. The roasting industry also has a strong emphasis on process, while the trading mindset is nimbler and more reactive as it needs to quickly adapt to market situations and shifting client needs.

In the past, I understand that some roasters set up trading departments but have since closed them. Is that correct?

There have been waves of this.  Both roasters and farmers are easily attracted to the idea of going direct, to cut out the middleman – the evil trader. And on the surface, many will agree that this makes sense. However, they quickly find out that the evil trader has many real and vital service functions. Roasters also found that trading is counter to their industrial DNA.

I don’t think it is possible to run a true trading functionality within an industrial company.

You are now moving to Neumann….

After 35 years in the coffee business, origin and trading, I spent the last 7 years with Jacobs Douwe Egberts. Two years ago, they promoted me to Global Head of Procurement, still in charge of the coffee and tea buying, but as well everything else such as packaging, machinery and even digital media. I found that I didn’t enjoy that. I really wanted to go back to what I love, which is coffee. I’m a coffee guy.

Neumann Kaffee Gruppe is the world’s largest green coffee house. They are a traditional and yet modern coffee firm with a focus on the product, on customers, the entire supply chain.  They value relationships and have a long-term commitment to coffee, and only to coffee.  So, when the opportunity came to become Co-CEO of Bernhard Rothfos, I jumped at it.

Is there a dichotomy, a divergence, between a roaster’s commercial department and its sustainability department? The sustainability people want to make sure that farmers stay in business, but the commercial people just want lowest price possible.

The people in both the sustainability and commercial departments of roasters have specific targets to achieve. Yes, there is the commercial drive to buy cheap, but it’s for management to pull those contradictions together and align them into a coherent brand strategy

Many roasters struggle with this, but that is what is so interesting about the coffee business in general. It is complex. It is changing. It has tensions. And those tensions will be resolved, sometimes with more of an emphasis on the commercial aspect, and sometimes with more of an emphasis on the sustainability aspect.

In the long run the consumer is the ultimate arbiter on those choices.

Many roasters only buy certified coffee. There seems to be a lot of certification systems: are there too many; and are they effective?

It’s very easy to be critical of certification.

My view is not that there are too many certifiers, or that they do a bad job. I strongly believe that the people in the certification business are good people who mean well and who do make a positive difference.

However, it is imperfect. And whatever positive impact one has in coffee producing countries the situation will remain imperfect. We are thus certifying imperfection.

There is a risk that you’re over promising. Even though the legal wording in the documents is smart enough so that the occasional unacceptable incident will not compromise a roaster’s legal position, consumers will nevertheless expect perfection.

Also, the desire by roasters to portray perfection can lead to a misallocation of resources. How much of the global sustainability spend reaches farmers and makes a real difference, and how much serves to “prove” perfection in a roaster’s supply chain? As a coffee industry, I believe we should be moving towards a mindset of transparency. Acknowledge the imperfections and then focus on mitigation and continuous improvement.

One of the things I’m most proud of at JDE was to be part of the effort to start a different thinking – to move from a mindset focused on certification to one where you acknowledge the imperfections in the supply chains, and then be a part of remedying them, ideally in a pre-competitive way.

So, you are saying that certification is part of the solution, but it’s not sufficient?

Yes. Also, let’s not forget that the traders are doing what the roasters are asking of them. The trade is a service provider to the industry. The buck stops with the roaster.

So, what is the solution?

People are very fast with quick answers, quick conclusions and one-liners, but coffee is complex.  There are a lot of tensions around development and sustainability, but you can’t limit the discussion to agriculture when many of the challenges are social.

The economic challenges in coffee producing countries aren’t always rooted in the price and productivity of coffee alone; they are often driven by societal issues. Many of the good NGOs are working on that.

The realities of coffee are just as varied and diverse as the different tastes of coffee: complex, contradictory, fascinating and not easy to resolve. But many very positive and engaging discussions are on-going.

Are you a coffee addict?

Yes, I love this business. You can touch it, feel it, smell it. It’s tangible.  I like the physicality of coffee: the beans and the beverage. I like the social aspect of coffee: it’s a people’s business.

Thank you, Jan for your time and input.

This is a short extract of an interview that will appear in my forthcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Jim Sutter (pictured bottom right) is CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council

Good morning, Jim. Could you please tell me about the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) and what it does?

We differentiate and build a preference for U.S. soy, and we ensure market access for U.S. soy in markets all around the world. We have a global network of about 140 people that work for our organization, most of them are outside the U.S.

How do you differentiate U.S. soy?

We demonstrate to our customers the U.S. Soy Advantage. It is anchored by four key elements. The first is its exceptional composition and intrinsic quality such as its amino acid profile and energy level. The second is consistent supply and reliability of our farmers and the whole export supply chain. The third is sustainability and our farmers commitment to protect the environment and conserve our natural resources. The final element is innovation beyond the bushel and the U.S. soy industry’s promise to continually adapt, evolve and improve.

How environmentally sustainable is U.S. soy?

Sustainability is in the DNA of our farmers; 97 percent of our farms are family-owned and nearly all are multi-generational. The farmers I talk with are always proud to tell me that they are 4^th, 5^th or 6^th generation.

For me, one of the ultimate measures of sustainability is if farmers are passing on their farms to the next generation. Not only that, but farmers will all also tell you that they want to leave their farm – particularly the soil – in better condition than when they started.

The U.S. Soil Conservation Service was founded in 1935, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and it has really helped educate and guide farmers on how to minimize soil erosion, as well as to limit the runoff of water and reduce the amount of energy they use.

When I think about what consumers around the world are concerned about – what they want to know when they’re asking about sustainability – is that the farmland will be there to feed their children and grandchildren. I think this multi-generational aspect is a great example of the sustainable way that we farm.

In addition, we have a program called the U.S. Soy Sustainability Assurance Protocol; it was developed by a multi-stakeholder group of global consumers, NGOs and the U.S. soybean industry as a means of verifying or showing the sustainability of our commodity. The European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC), which has developed soy-sourcing guidelines that allows buyers to verify the sustainability of the soy that they’re sourcing, has approved and recognised the verification.

How are the trade wars affecting you?

The U.S. soybean industry started investing in China 40 years ago. We’re very pleased with the relationship that we have built up over that time.

China is the largest import market in the world for soy. The trade war was detrimental for U.S. farmers, and we lost market share in this valuable destination for U.S. soy, but I anticipate this for only an ephemeral period. In the meantime, we shifted some exports to other regions, but you don’t want to be hindered from a market that makes up 60 percent of total world import demand.

We’re pleased that the Phase One agreement has been put in place, and we are optimistic that it will be implemented. The volume is significant as China pledged to buy $32 billion worth of U.S. agriculture products over two years. I know that there’s a lot of talking back and forth between the two countries, but I think at the end of the day China, and its many importers of U.S. Soy with whom we’ve built strong relationships, wants to see the agreement implemented as much as we do.

If you’re a sizable importer, you want multiple origins to choose from, so China has identified suppliers from both northern hemisphere origin (primarily from the United States) and southern hemisphere origin (primarily from Brazil). That’s how world trade works: importers want to have multiple origins to buy from, and exporters want to have multiple destinations to sell to.

How has African Swine Fever affected exports?

It did lower total global demand for soy, but it didn’t impact the U.S. too much. It was happening in China at a time when exports were down. We hear that the ASF situation is improving pretty rapidly there, and we’re glad to hear that.

With regard to ASF in other markets, we’re certainly concerned because it is a serious disease for the swine industries in those respective countries. So, we want to do all we can to help prevent the spread of ASF, and of course, stop it from reaching the U.S. We hope that science can help eradicate ASF, or at least keep it under control.

Are you actively trying to develop overseas markets outside of China?

As I mentioned, China is the largest import market for soy, but we do a lot of work in other markets as well. We diversify our marketing efforts, and we have stepped up our work in countries with large populations, low protein consumption and growing economies – for example Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt.

We work to teach people in these countries, to bring them skills on how to better use soy to improve livestock nutrition – the kind of things we did in China years ago. We are trying to take that same educational model to other markets around the world.

Which are the top three export markets for U.S. soy?

As individual countries, China, Mexico and Egypt are our top three markets, but when you take the EU as a whole it slips in there at number two after China.

Does USSEC also work to increase domestic U.S. soy demand?

The United Soybean Board (USB) is one of our founding members; they do the domestic marketing work for soy inside the U.S.

USB manages the checkoff program. Each U.S. farmer contributes a small portion of the selling price of soybeans into the checkoff program, and that provides resources that USB invests in the domestic market; they also invest in the work that the USSEC does internationally.

U.S. soy farmers have been going through a rough time recently. What message would you like to send to them?

It’s fortunate that you are in the food production business. The products that farmers produce serve as the foundation for food, feed and fuel and are grown in a sustainable and high-quality manner that meet what the people of the world need to survive and thrive.

I tell our farmers to ‘stick with it’, and that the future looks bright. We have a growing world population out there. You’re going to be an important part of feeding those people in the future.

Thank you, Jim for your time and comments!

Jim Sutter presented at the IGC Virtual Conference in London on June 10^th. To see his and other presentations, please register here.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Pedro Amaral is Deputy Director of Proforest. I talked to him by telephone from Sao Paulo.

Good morning, Pedro. Could you tell me a little about Proforest?

Proforest is a not-for-profit group that works with governments, producers and other private sector partners, as well as civil society organisations and NGOs throughout agricultural and forest product supply chains.

Founded in 2000, we now have around a hundred people in our group. Our headquarters are in Oxford UK, and we also have offices in Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, Malaysia and Indonesia. We are currently opening offices in Mexico and the Netherlands.

Our mission is to help people produce and source natural resources sustainably. We have a focus on agricultural commodities, and we partner with companies in the supply chain – producers, traders, manufacturers, brands, and retailers – to help them come up with commitments around how they produce and source commodities; we then help them to implement these commitments.

We have a charity and we have a consulting arm. Part of our resources come from the companies that we partner with. These are some of the largest brands on the planet: Nestlé, Mars, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Unilever, etc. Part of our resources come from funding agencies such as the UK’s DFID. Whenever we work with grants, we work on specific programmes.

In terms of deforestation, soy and palm must be the biggest culprits…

Cattle raising is by a long way the commodity associated with the largest deforestation areas, and soy comes second. Brazil is where most of the commodity-related deforestation is happening. Some researchers estimate twice as much native forest is associated to cattle raising in Brazil than is to palm production in Indonesia and Malaysia^,.

Of course, a lot of the soy and cattle produced is not associated with recent deforestation – we could assume most of it is not. The deforestation cycle is complex and includes drivers such as land speculation, land grabbing or illegal lodging, on top of commodity production – which might end up happening on land cleared initially due to other drivers. Deforestation not only happens for commodity production, but there is a clear link with it, sometimes directly and other times indirectly.

Tell me about the Soy Toolkit.

The Soy Toolkit is part of a broader program called the Good Growth Partnership that addresses beef, palm oil and soy. It is funded by the Global Environment Facility and is developed in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It is a demand side toolkit that shows supply chain companies the resources that already exist to address deforestation, native vegetation conversion and human rights issues in the supply chain. Overall, it aims at helping increase the capacity that companies have to implement their commitments, building on existing initiatives.

The Soy Toolkit can help companies understand, for instance, tools that will allow them to show their different stakeholders (customers, for instance) that the soy being traded is deforestation-free. On the other hand, it will also allow them to flag whenever there is a problem, which in turn provides them with the opportunity to take action to resolve it.

What are the resources and initiatives that already exist?

The Amazon Soy Moratorium, as one example, is an agreement signed in 2006 to ensure that soy production in the Amazon region only occurs on existing agricultural land and not through deforestation of native vegetation. It has been successful in helping reduce soy-related deforestation in the Amazon.

Anyone who buys soy from Brazil should check that they are buying from a company that is a signatory to the moratorium: If they are, the buyer should ask for the audit reports to see if they are 100 percent compliant, and if they’re not, to take action on it. If they’re not a signatory, then the buyer should ask them to become a signatory. The moratorium provides a credible and successful framework to demonstrate that, whenever you are trading soy from the Amazon, it is deforestation-free.

The Forest Code obliges a landowner to protect from at least 20 to 80 percent of their land as native vegetation, depending where the property is. Under the farm registry system the government provides on-line access to every single farm boundary, as well as information on protected areas. This provides people with an unprecedented level of transparency with over 5 million properties enrolled – more than 90 percent of all the properties in the country.

If you are a trader, you can ask your supplier for the registry number. You can then use this number on the system to see, for instance, if their registry is active, pending or cancelled. If it’s cancelled, it could be because the farm overlays with protected areas like an indigenous territory.

The Federal Environmental Agency maintains a list of environmental embargoes, some of which are because of illegal deforestation. IBAMA puts in the public domain areas that that have been found to be breaching our environmental laws. If you buy soybeans directly from the farmer, you can cross-check your supplier name with this list.

Another example is the Public Prosecutor’s Office website, which includes lawsuits related to environmental and social issues like land conflicts. It will show you if you’re buying from someone who has a lawsuit outstanding.

There are many other initiatives and resources we feature in the Soy Toolkit. We mapped over 100 of them, including tools that can help you with traceability, continuous improvement programs for farmers, or information on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to policy implementation being reported by supply chain companies.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic for the Amazon jungle in terms of soy and agriculture?

The past two decades have proven that deforestation can be drastically reduced while crop (and meat) production can keep on increasing. Looking back, the combination of market mechanisms, geospatial monitoring, improved law enforcement, partnerships between the private sector and the civil society managed to accomplish great results in the Amazon. I am, therefore, optimistic that there is a successful track record of initiatives that, together, can achieve such great results.

On the other hand, we have seen deforestation rising again in recent years. A recent report shows that in 2019, Brazil accounted for a third of the world’s tropical primary forest loss on the planet. There has been a troubling increase in forest loss in Brazil and some of the hot spots of loss are happening within indigenous territories.  Recent research shows that most of the deforestation was not authorized and could be then deemed illegal.

Looking forward, there is a need to further strengthen law enforcement in Brazil. The market has to step up. Supply chain companies might need to play an even more important role now, by monitoring their supply chains and implementing their responsible sourcing policies.

Companies should work to shed light on what is being produced according to the law, respecting the zero conversion commitments and human rights — and I would expect many, if not most of producers, to be compliant. By scrutinizing their supply chains, they will also shed light on where wrongdoing is happening and will therefore be able to work as a catalyst to promote positive changes on the ground whilst further strengthening their commercial relationships.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I think that the more everyone knows about what’s already available, and what’s been successful already, the more capable they will be to implement their sourcing policies.

Up until April, 2021, we can offer free webinars, workshops and training funded by the Global Environment Facility through WWF to help companies understand what traceability and deforestation analysis tools exist, and how they can benefit from them. It’s all available in English, Portuguese and Mandarin.  People can contact us via the e-mail soytoolkit@proforest.net

We’ve just secured funding to extend our soy toolkit to beef and palm oil – which will allow us to shed light on resources companies can build on to implement their responsible commitments related to these commodities too. It will build on the work we did for the Soy Toolkit and lessons learned from that programme.

Our ultimate goal is to help supply chain companies to implement their commitments. We are not telling companies what to do, but we are rather showing them the tools and resources that they can use in implementing their commitments.

Thank you, Pedro for your time and input!

Pedro will be presenting at the International Grains Council virtual conference on 10th June 2020.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020