How Cargill is advancing its water stewardship coverage

In keeping with Ceres’ Valuing Water Finance Initiative Benchmark report, no firm has met 75 % of the “Company Expectations for Valuing Water,” which embody requirements for water amount and high quality, ecosystem safety, entry to water and sanitation, board oversight and public coverage engagement.

Eleven corporations stand out as “on monitor,” although, having met 50 to 75 % of the standards. The very best-ranking corporations had been all from the meals sector, with Cargill, Danone and Normal Mills popping out on high. I just lately spoke with Truke Smoor, Cargill’s world sustainability director for water, to grasp the philosophy behind Cargill’s top-ranked water program and the place it’s headed. Listed below are my key takeaways.

Don’t let good be the enemy of fine

One query constantly comes up in water, biodiversity and deforestation conversations: Ought to we act with imperfect knowledge or await higher knowledge? With regards to water, giant meals corporations have to maneuver ahead with imperfect knowledge, taking a regional method when farm-level data is unavailable. Firms ought to ask, “Who’re my suppliers and the way can we work collectively to scale back water impacts?” 

It is smart to focus first on essentially the most water-intensive components, which range by firm. For Cargill, these embody cocoa, maize/corn, palm oil, soy and cattle merchandise. For Mars, it’s rice, maize/corn, sugar, mint and grain. There’s nobody proper reply or greatest apply — the influence and alternative for lowering water impacts will range based mostly on the amount of the ingredient being produced and water safety (each present and projected with local weather change) within the sourcing area.

Combine water throughout applications

In agriculture, a water technique targeted solely on water is insufficient. Strong water methods embody different parts of sustainable meals methods, equivalent to wholesome soils and functioning ecosystems. 

For sustainability professionals, this implies trying throughout applications to think about co-benefits with out compromising the integrity of anybody challenge. Cargill’s inner course of seems to be at initiatives holistically, Smoor stated, and permits groups to tag them with the suitable impacts (water, land). This method permits them to calculate and monitor the related co-benefits of every challenge and gives transparency throughout groups. 

It’s uncommon to listen to a sustainability skilled communicate publicly a few cross-cutting challenge on this manner. Maybe the extraordinary stress for corporations equivalent to Cargill to deal with large-scale land use conversion and deforestation makes them much less more likely to share small wins that lower throughout land and water, equivalent to defending riparian buffers on agricultural lands. Plus, initiatives with water advantages are typically native in scale and overshadowed by world carbon initiatives. However complete and streamlined approaches are desperately wanted to deal with the water and biodiversity crises.

Create enabling situations for systems-level change

One space the place Cargill got here up quick in Ceres’ report was on collective motion. It’s a phrase that’s so overused within the water house that I typically discover myself questioning if individuals are simply saying it to sign they belong within the dialog. So I used to be shocked by Smoor’s reply. She didn’t faux to be targeted on collective motion within the conventional sense of the phrase; slightly, she described Cargill’s function as establishing enabling situations for large-scale systems-level change. 

Why? Its footprint and provide chain is so huge that even a small shift in water use in its manufacturing or sourcing practices can shortly get to scale by itself. In 2024, she’s looking forward to Cargill to give attention to implementation utilizing regenerative agriculture as a pathway to enhance water resilience throughout provide chains. Different areas of early exploration embody improved grazing administration in protein provide chains and improved irrigation effectivity.

Sadly, one very important water-saving answer continues to be lacking from that narrative: an general discount within the manufacturing and consumption of animal merchandise. The water footprint of meat and dairy eclipses that of different crops. Within the Colorado River basin, for instance, 55 % of whole water consumption is used to develop feed for livestock, totaling 1 trillion gallons per 12 months . We will and may enhance water use effectivity in our present methods, however really catalytic options will embody a shift away from our present meat-heavy diets. Firms equivalent to Cargill are uniquely positioned to drive that change.

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