Global agribusiness giant Bunge has achieved its 100% traceability and monitoring target for its direct and indirect soyabean purchases in priority regions of the Cerrado biome in Brazil, World Grain reported.
Priority regions at risk of deforestation in the Cerrado included the Brazilian states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, Bahia and Mato Grosso, the 22 November report said.
Following on from its work in tracking and monitoring direct soyabean purchases from farmers in 2020, the company achieved 100% tracking and monitoring of its indirect purchases from local grain resellers in October using satellite monitoring, World Grain wrote.
Bunge said its Sustainable Partnership programme, which fosters socio-environmental governance in the soyabean value chain, had helped it reach its goal.
Since 2021, the initiative had shared knowledge, methodologies and tools with cooperatives and grain resellers to support them in structuring their own traceability, monitoring and supplier verification systems, the company said.
At the time of the report, more than 90 resellers had participated in the initiative in Brazil, the company said.
“This [is a] major milestone in our 10-year journey to achieve traceable and verifiable supply chains, so that we reach our zero-deforestation goal in 2025,” Bunge vice president of Agribusiness in South America Rossano de Angelis Jr was quoted as saying.
“Reconciling the development of agriculture with the preservation of the environment depends on a collective journey.”
As part of the Sustainable Partnership programme, resellers are provided with access to agtech company Vega Monitoramento’s LYRA platform.
The programme offers access to verification systems, such as satellite and farm-scale images, remote sensing, artificial intelligence and structured data for traceability and monitoring purposes.
“We agreed with our technology partner Vega to make the tool available to other companies in the sector, so that they can also have their indirect supply chains tracked and monitored,” de Angelis Jr added.