Pull in one direction for supply chain sustainability

COMPANIES that produce or sell food face a big hurdle when it comes to achieving sustainability goals in energy, waste, water, deforestation and a host of social issues. Retailers and consumer goods companies may have adapted their own practices to lower resource consumption, for example, but now discover they cannot reach higher sustainability objectives unless they collaborate extensively with their agricultural suppliers.

One problem is that, because suppliers are much closer to where system-wide changes actually happen, they typically have a stronger grasp of the challenges at hand - and have set targets that are far lower than those of the companies they supply.

This is causing consumer goods companies and retailers to take a new approach to sustainability - one that forces them to look deeper into the details of food production and requires them to collaborate with not only their direct suppliers, but also a host of others in the sustainability value chain.