Nine of the ten largest food and beverage companies have improved their ratings in social sustainability by at least 10% in the three years since the introduction of a landmark new benchmark, according to development charity Oxfam.
Oxfam has highlighted major improvements to policies on land rights, agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and gender equality across companies’ supply chains since it started keeping records through its Behind the Brands scorecard. Kellogg (up 30%) and Unilever (up 26%) made the most progress across all themes since the campaign began, the UK-based organisation revealed.
More than 700,000 Behind the Brands actions have pushed the companies to take significant steps to address land rights, gas emissions and gender equality, described as “specific policy weaknesses” as identified by public campaigning. Across the three areas, the businesses improved by an average of 24%, 37% and 32% respectively, Oxfam said. It also judged companies against their work in improving the self-reliance and economic opportunities of farmer suppliers – as well as their records on labour rights, climate change, financial transparency and water management.
Even Danone – the only company in the global top ten not to have made progress greater than 10% – improved its work to secure social sustainability by 7% compared with three years ago.
“These food industry giants all demonstrated that they do listen to consumers by making some bold policy commitments, Behind the Brands campaign manager Monique van Zijl said. We hope this will inspire others to follow suit.
“Now it’s crucial for the ‘big ten’ to substantially change their business models to make good on these promises, and challenge their suppliers to ensure that small-scale producers get fair and liveable wages.
“The ‘big ten’ could make a huge impact in helping fight poverty by ensuring the prices they pay for commodities allow for a living wage for the workers in their supply chains.”
Throughout the campaign, Unilever and Nestlé have consistently scored high on climate change policies. Unilever achieved the top spot from Nestlé after two years. Coca-Cola, with strong policies on land rights, remains third at 57%, followed by Kellogg at 53%. But many of the companies made nominal progress on issues such as transparency, water usage reduction and workers’ rights, highlighting the extent of work still ahead of them.
Van Zijl continued: “Despite some strong progress over the past three years, the ‘big ten’ still have a lot of work to do. Given the inequalities and injustices in the food chain that leave millions of people at risk of being food insecure, especially small-scale producers, the ‘big ten must use their power to transform how food is produced, traded and processed. Giving more power and economic value to farmers, workers and food producing communities will not only be good for all of us, but also for the companies’ bottom lines in the long run.”
Public engagement with the campaign showed that consumers care about how companies do business and will take action to help drive policy changes on sustainability issues, Oxfam claimed. It also said that investors can help to put pressure on companies to address subjects like climate change and land rights.
The findings have been published in Oxfam’s recent paper, entitled The Journey to Sustainable Food.
In full: progress of the global ‘top ten’
Improvement to social sustainability by overall score change.
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