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Sustainability

Working with Partners

We recognize that we can have a greater impact by working with others.

Platform Partnerships

Through partnerships with multiple stakeholders, we aim to raise awareness and secure adoption of our sustainability policies by suppliers to all our commercial platforms.

We also continually engage with different partners on a variety of country- or product-specific projects promoting fair and sustainable food and agricultural production.

Juice

Our Juice Platform places huge emphasis on training – both for the people working at our 38 LDC-managed citrus farms in Brazil and for third-party fruit suppliers, whom we engage with through LDC’s Programa Compartilhar, which includes training on LDC policies and sustainable production.

As part of our commitment to sustainable agricultural practices, LDC-managed citrus farms are being verified by the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform, which seeks to help shape a sustainable and resilient agricultural sector through strong and secure supply chains. In 2020, we increased the number of farms verified as SAI Platform ‘Gold’ level to 35 (92% of LDC-managed farms).

Working with the Rainforest Alliance, we strive for both farm-level and chain of custody certification, ensuring supply chain traceability from certified farms in Brazil all the way to our destination terminal in Ghent, Belgium.

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Cotton

To encourage responsible cotton production, we support the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) in its important efforts to drive progress in the industry.

We work closely with the BCI, promoting their comprehensive sustainability standards, cooperating on local projects and purchasing increasing volumes of Better Cotton worldwide.

In Zambia and Burkina Faso, we partner with Cotton Made in Africa (CMiA). In Zambia, this includes training thousands of cotton farmers on agricultural best practice, helping them to improve their livelihoods while reducing their environmental impact.

Since 2018, we have partnered with BCI and Puneet Enterprises to support some 15,000 farmers in India in addressing some of the social, economic and climatic challenges associated with cotton production, such as dependence on credit, unpredictable weather, lack of technical information and market access, as well as gender inequality.

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Soy

Beyond training employees and promoting our soy policy among our suppliers, we work with several stakeholder groups to eliminate conversion – from global NGOs such as The Nature Conservancy to local organizations such as the Cerrado Working Group and ABIOVE, the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries. We are also a founding member and fervent upholed

As members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), we helped launch the Soft Commodities Forum (SCF) – a global platform for leading companies in the industry to advance collective action around common sustainability challenges.

As a founding member and fervent upholder of the Soy Moratorium in the Amazon, LDC considers very positive the significant reduction in soy origination from areas deforested since 2008, even as productivity gains have seen the volume of soy increase.

Alongside other SCF members, we are committed to moving the conversation from deforestation to non-conversion. In 2019, we initiated a joint process to trace and report on any soy sourced from the Cerrado, and publish these figures twice a year, aiming to protect high-risk areas by driving increasing supply chain transparency.

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Palm Oil

Certification is an important tool to ensure we source sustainably, and we work extensively with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and with the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC), to certify our palm-related assets and entities.

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Coffee

Recognizing that such schemes offer assurances to consumers and help increase transparency in supply chains, we work with a variety of partners toward coffee verification and certification, including the Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity) and 4C. We are also currently piloting our own responsible sourced program.

We also know that by extending our focus beyond certification, we reach more farmers and so contribute to a more sustainable global coffee supply chain. We currently manage a diversified portfolio of projects in seven different countries, which have reached more than 30,000 beneficiaries so far.

Our projects offer support in multiple areas: good agricultural practices (GAP) training, coffee plant regeneration, agroforestry, access to inputs, saving water, community schools and provisions, among others.

For example, since 2016 we have worked with the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) and Syngenta in Lam Dong, Vietnam, through our joint Initiative for Sustainable Landscape Approach (ISLA) that continues to train thousands of farmers to adapt to climate change.

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Freight

As a responsible freight operator, LDC continually strives to reduce shipping emissions while seeking sustainable solutions for the gradual decarbonization of maritime freight.

As one of the founding signatories of the Sea Cargo Charter, alongside 17 of the world’s largest energy, agriculture, mining and commodity trading companies, we are committed to accurately and transparently assessing and disclosing the climate footprint of our shipping activities.

We see this multi-stakeholder initiative as an important step toward achieving our adopted climate goal from the International Maritime Organization (IMO), to reduce total annual GHG shipping emissions by at least 50% of 2008 levels by 2050.

We also work with the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, the Institute for Human Rights and Business and other maritime industry players to safeguard the rights and well-being of seafarers – our partners at sea.

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