In line with Ceres’ Valuing Water Finance Initiative Benchmark report, no firm has met 75 p.c of the “Company Expectations for Valuing Water,” which embrace 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 observe,” although, having met 50 to 75 p.c of the standards. The best-ranking corporations had been all from the meals sector, with Cargill, Danone and Common Mills popping out on prime. I lately spoke with Truke Smoor, Cargill’s world sustainability director for water, to know the philosophy behind Cargill’s top-ranked water program and the place it’s headed. Listed here are my key takeaways.
Don’t let good be the enemy of fine
One query persistently comes up in water, biodiversity and deforestation conversations: Ought to we act with imperfect information or watch for higher information? In relation to water, giant meals corporations have to maneuver ahead with imperfect information, 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 elements, which differ by firm. For Cargill, these embrace 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 finest apply — the influence and alternative for decreasing water impacts will differ 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 packages
In agriculture, a water technique centered solely on water is insufficient. Sturdy water methods embrace different elements of sustainable meals programs, similar to wholesome soils and functioning ecosystems.
For sustainability professionals, this implies trying throughout packages to contemplate co-benefits with out compromising the integrity of anyone challenge. Cargill’s inner course of seems to be at tasks holistically, Smoor mentioned, and permits groups to tag them with the suitable impacts (water, land). This technique permits them to calculate and observe the related co-benefits of every challenge and gives transparency throughout groups.
It’s uncommon to listen to a sustainability skilled communicate publicly a couple of cross-cutting challenge on this means. Maybe the extraordinary strain for corporations similar 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, similar to defending riparian buffers on agricultural lands. Plus, tasks with water advantages are usually native in scale and overshadowed by world carbon tasks. 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 brief in Ceres’ report was on collective motion. It’s a phrase that’s so overused within the water area 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 fake to be centered on collective motion within the conventional sense of the phrase; reasonably, 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 longing for Cargill to give attention to implementation utilizing regenerative agriculture as a pathway to enhance water resilience throughout provide chains. Different areas of early exploration embrace 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 total 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 p.c of complete water consumption is used to develop feed for livestock, totaling 1 trillion gallons per yr . We will and will enhance water use effectivity in our current programs, however really catalytic options will embrace a shift away from our present meat-heavy diets. Firms similar to Cargill are uniquely positioned to drive that change.
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