Fixing the Business of Food

What does it mean for a food and agriculture company to be aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Despite growing corporate sustainability efforts, the answer to this question remains unclear. Companies, investors, consumers, and citizens continue to face challenges in understanding what it means for a company or an investment to be considered “sustainable” or not. The lack of a rigorous and comprehensive framework through which to assess corporate alignment with the SDGs leaves companies without clear guidance on supporting SDG achievement. This gap also enables companies to downplay some areas of the SDGs when reporting on their sustainability performance. In 2019, the Fixing the Business of Food Initiative presented a Four Pillar Framework for alignment of the food and agriculture sector with the SDGs. This report presents a deeper iteration of that conceptual framework to guide business alignment with the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA), specifically for companies in the food and agriculture sector. We propose a Four Pillar Framework, which seeks to contribute to corporate SDG alignment by bringing rigor and clarity on the aspects of business activity that affect the SDGs. To understand how the framework might be applied to the food and agriculture sector, the report also elaborates on the key environmental, nutrition, and social & governance topics that companies in the food and agriculture sector need to tackle in order to achieve the SDGs. The report further assesses current sustainability reporting standards, frameworks, and certifications against the Four Pillar Framework and key identified topics, exploring whether available reporting instruments sufficiently support SDG alignment. It concludes by examining how business indicators might be developed under the Framework to support its application, using greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions as an example, and with some recommendations. The new Report highlights the following: - Sustainability standards, frameworks, certifications, and accounting mechanisms should be improved in line with the 2030 Agenda, especially with reference to topics concerning supply/value chains and corporate citizenship – areas where companies tend to share very few disclosures. - Metrics more coherent with the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement should be defined by regulators to be adapted by companies. To this aim, the Fixing the Business of Food Initiative will release its 2020 Report in September, including proposals for a more precise measurement of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. - Businesses should systematically disclose their strategies, practices, and achievements or non-achievements of sustainability targets, using standardised indicators, metrics and benchmarks in order to measure the alignment of their strategies to the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement. - Businesses can promote more sustainable and healthier dietary patterns through marketing and communications. Such efforts should be clearly represented in their sustainability reports. - In line with the provisions of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy, policymakers should actively support a more ambitious regulation on sustainability reporting and ask for more rigorous governance and management practices that align with the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. - When monitoring the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) of companies’ performance, investors should put more emphasis on metrics and indicators aligned with the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement. - Businesses should be supported in their transition towards sustainability. This would allow companies to take advantage of the opportunities behind such change, without being fearful of the transition. To this aim, a self-assessment model based on the Four Pillar Framework is being developed by the Fixing the Business of Food Initiative.