The 2021 report provides an update on the food and agribusiness sector’s alignment with the SDGs, as well as offering guidelines to help companies accomplish the change of direction needed to address this challenge.
Fixing the Business of Food recommends that companies test their strategies and activities across four key areas: beneficial products and strategies, sustainable business operations and internal processes, sustainable supply and value chains, and good corporate citizenship.
The report introduces this 4-pillar Framework and a set of 21 corresponding standards to lead the change towards more sustainable food systems.
2020 Report
How to align the
agri-food sector with the SDGs
The Report uncover that in order to support the transformation to more sustainable and healthier food systems, a change in business practices is required, as well as more harmonised and comparable monitoring and reporting standards to support companies as they set ambitious targets in terms of the Four Pillars Framework.
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.
2019 Report
The Food Industry, from farm to fork, is increasingly aligning its practices with the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement in order to promote its financial, social, and legal sustainability. Our basic conclusion in this first report is that many industry leaders have already taken important steps towards alignment with the SDGs but that much more work is needed in terms of business action towards sustainable development as well as to make sustainability reporting more systematic, detailed, and useful for all parties: the companies, the investors, civil society organizations, and the public.
Full research insights
Food Systems’ scenario
The six transformations
The challenge of unsustainable land-use and Food Systems
The global Food Paradoxes
The role of individual Food Choices
Where we are in implementing Sustainable Food Systems
Evidence from the field
Sustainability reporting and monitoring in the food sector: actors, principles and tools
Businesses practices – 10 cases by company
List of publicly available documents analyzed for each company
Methodology
Research methodology