“We have a broken food system. That really now is a statement of the obvious.”
As an opening gambit, it grabbed the attention – but, in many ways, it was hard to disagree with Natalie Bennett, the former leader of the Green Party in England, as she kicked off the Eco Foods conference in London.
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Against a backdrop of concerns about the industry’s impact on climate change, the challenge of food security, plastic pollution, pressure on biodiversity and a manner of other issues, the event, held in the UK capital late last month, focused on how the country’s agri-food sector is trying to make its value chains – from farm to fork – more environmentally sustainable.
After outlining a list of the problems swirling around the UK food system, Bennett – now Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle – quipped: “I promise to give you a warm green glow and I haven’t given you anything like a warm green glow” before adding: “We know the answers. We know what we need to do for this food system.”
The moves by Unilever, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola to change their ESG targets over the last 12 months have sparked a fierce debate about corporate commitment to goals in areas from emissions to packaging.
But, throughout the Eco Foods conference, three conclusions could be drawn: there is an appetite throughout the UK food industry to tackle the long list of complex sustainability issues facing the sector; progress remains slow and uneven; and, while indeed many in the industry know what they want to achieve, how they can get there is not yet clear – and may need a lot more co-operation throughout all parts of the value chain.
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By GlobalDataIt became clear the industry is making headway but a lot of work still needs to be done – and a lot of challenges need to be overcome.
Executives from Thai Union, Quorn Foods and Arla Foods were among those who discussed their companies’ sustainability initiatives at the conference, which was held in London’s financial district.
After five years of a global pandemic, supply-chain disruption, geopolitical turbulence, cost pressure and cautious consumers, it wouldn’t be a surprise if, in some boardrooms, environmental sustainability has become less of a priority than perhaps it was in the back half of the 2010s.
Ahead of one of the morning panels at Eco Foods, the assembled delegates were asked to vote on the “most challenging” aspect of sustainability. More than 60% selected “commercial sustainability”.
“Often we hear that, the interplay between environmental sustainability and commercial sustainability is the sweet spot for a lot of people but, with current supply chains and disruptions right across the globe, I guess commercial sustainability is obviously becoming more a priority for a lot of businesses,” Dr. Peter Noy, director of the Food Systems Institute at the University of Nottingham, reflected.
“Scope 3 is a beast”
Where food companies can make – and have so far made – progress is where change is more directly in their own gift. On their climate footprint, tackling emissions closer to home is easier than further up (or down) their value chains.
However, like their counterparts across FMCG, a company’s Scope 3 emissions are often the biggest share of their overall footprint and can account for 90-95% of a food manufacturer’s emissions. If a company is serious about aligning its business with the UN’s climate goals, it’s clear these need to be tackled.
Later in the day, Eco Foods’ delegates were asked to sum up their progress so far on their companies’ net-zero targets. One audience member remarked: “Scope 3 is a beast.”
To say working with suppliers on reducing Scope 3 emissions is complicated is a statement of the obvious. The challenges for food manufacturers include (but are not limited to) whether suppliers measure their own emissions, how they do so, what data they collect, how that data then compares to that from other suppliers and on and on.
Food manufacturers’ work on Scope 3 doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It takes place while they are trying to do what all companies do: grow.
“We are a business that’s been growing 40-50% for the last, like, three years and continue to do so this year. With our absolute carbon footprint going up but our requirements to try and get [emissions] down, it is something we are not giving up on but it’s definitely a challenge,” Adam Thompson, supply chain and sustainability director of UK nut-butter business Pip & Nut, says.
Ahead of a panel in the afternoon, the audience at Eco Foods was asked what their organisation’s top priority was as they sought to build more sustainable supply chains. Perhaps unsurprisingly driving Scope 3 emissions was the top answer.
The headway manufacturers are making on Scope 3 remains patchy. Progress can range from drawing up what tends to be called a “framework” against which to measure emissions through to pilot initiatives with small groups of suppliers for specific inputs and on to wider efforts across geographies but still on limited areas of procurement. And results may underwhelm.
Scope 3 is difficult in that, in food, there rarely seems to be a sort of silver bullet
Chris Shearlock, Thai Union
On the panel was Chris Shearlock, ambient sustainability director for Thai Union, the seafood titan. The company embarked on a carbon-footprint project for its John West brand last year, Shearlock said, as he outlined the results.
“My reflection was that you could do a huge amount of innovation and a project that was quite transformative over a number of years and you still get relatively small percentages in terms of reductions,” he said. “Scope 3 is difficult in that, in food, there rarely seems to be a sort of silver bullet. You don’t come back with projects that give you 60% or 70%.”
A major question for manufacturers and their suppliers to consider when tackling Scope 3 – and the investment that necessitates – is: who shoulders those costs? It’s a concern for suppliers especially if the investment could make them less competitive.
“I don’t know the answer, I’m happy to admit, because it’s a really challenging one,” Jack Watts, sustainability group lead at the National Farmers’ Union, said. “Businesses have to be able to compete, have to be able to exist, and have to know that they’ve got that long-term partnership. If costs do start rising, businesses need confidence they’re not going to be undercut by [customers finding] something cheaper from somewhere else. We are seeing hints of that where actually the easiest thing is [being told] ‘Actually, we’ll find some imported product off the world market that’s easier to deal with.’”
Pip & Nut’s Thompson underlined the costs should be “shared” and highlighted an initiative where the company, alongside other peanut buyers in Europe, is working with growers in Argentina “to decarbonise the industry there”.
He added: “From the brand point of view, it’s providing suppliers with that partnership approach which fosters long-term collaboration. If you need a supplier or a farmer to invest, then they’re not going to do that – or going to be less willing to – if they think that it is maybe a one-time deal for a year or two years and, if next time the price from someone else is better, then you’re going to jump ship.”
Collaboration call
As is often the case at industry events focusing on environmental sustainability, the topic of collaboration throughout the supply chain featured heavily.
“There needs to be much more collaboration across different sectors,” Antony Mulley, the head of business development at Marlow Ingredients, said.
Marlow Ingredients is a division of Quorn Foods and sells the mycoprotein that is in the UK meat-free company’s products on a B2B basis to other businesses. Quorn has worked with the University of Nottingham as part of the academics’ work looking at protein production in the context of a rising global population.
“We often think of ourselves as a food industry and probably that’s a bit like, say, Quorn, Mars, or Unilever. There’s also the greater food chain where we probably need to start linking in more with farming organisations, with transport groups and how the holistic picture is all starting to fit together, rather than just chunking it in our individual supply chain. The benefits there can be absolutely huge. It’s probably an area that some people are looking at but probably not as much detail as we need.”
In some areas, competitors are working together on environmental sustainability while bearing in mind, of course, the need to fulfil anti-trust requirements. Camilla Riddiford, the head of sustainability at Arla Foods’ UK arm, pointed to the dairy giant’s work with Tesco and its biggest rival in the country, Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller. The Future Dairy Partnership was unveiled in November as a way to speed up the reduction of carbon emissions in the sector, as well as improving animal welfare and “protecting nature”, Tesco said at the time.
“The purpose of this is to really collaborate around those shared barriers, the shared challenges that we all face in the dairy sector in the UK, so we can unlock more of those barriers for our farmers to take action on sustainability,” Riddiford told the Eco Foods audience. “That’s the key thing for us: really shifting from this value chain-type approach to a full systems-level approach to be able to meet our Scope 3 ambitions.”
Teaming up with competitors can pay off, once perhaps some understandable suspicion is worked through, Thai Union’s Shearlock – a former executive at rival tuna supplier Princes – reflected. The companies have worked together on fishery improvement projects.
“It takes a number of years to break that down and then you actually have a very cordial, pre-competitive atmosphere,” he said. “If you’ve got something that is mutually very beneficial – we are slugging it on a day-to-day basis, John West and Princes on the shelves at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, wherever it is – in terms of Indian Ocean tuna sustainability, we pick up the phone to each other but it took a long time to get to that. If you’ve got a really keen, shared interest – for us, it is the fish turning up at our factories in Seychelles and Mauritius and also that our customers will accept it – it’s very clear, pre-competitive, great.”
The role of consumers – and policy-makers
All actors in the value chain will need to do their bit. When it comes to consumers, there is often a gap between intent and actual purchase habits. “Everyone talks a really good game on the sustainability side; actually, when you look at the decision to purchase, sustainability is still like quite far down that list,” Pip & Nut’s Thompson said. “We are a very kind of sustainability- and purpose-driven brand and we talk about that a lot. It definitely does make a difference for the consumers that they know they’re buying products from a responsible business but it does still come quite far down the decision hierarchy when you’re actually buying products standing in front of a shelf.”
Food waste in the home is perhaps one of the principal areas where changes in consumer behaviour could have a noticeable impact. In the UK, the charity and NGO WRAP has run the Love Food Hate Waste campaign to try to reduce the amount of food wasted at home. WRAP estimates 60% of the food that is wasted in the UK is wasted by citizens in their own homes. In recent years, major UK supermarkets have removed best-before dates on much of their fresh produce in a bid to save waste.
Estelle Herszenhorn, head of food system transformation at WRAP, said the organisation is “very proud of what it’s achieved” but added: “With food waste, as with kind of any consumption change, we can’t rely on consumer education and consumer choice. I believe that we have to make it as easy as possible for people.
“What our research found was the mere presence of that date label meant that people didn’t trust their judgment and they chucked away really good food. That’s an example of a change that can happen: because that prompt now isn’t there, we estimate that that saved over 50,000 tons of good fruit and veg being chucked away every year. I’d really encourage us to not leap to consumer education and consumer choice. It has a role to play but I think the bigger responsibility and opportunity is to set people up for success.”
However, there are, Herszenhorn noted, areas where governments need to step in to push through change. The example she raised centred on fresh produce but it rings true across a range of environmental sustainability themes.
“If fruit and veg can be sold loose, you’ve got the win of people can buy the amount that they need, which reduces food waste, you’re removing unnecessary plastic packaging and you’re also encouraging people to buy the right amount of a healthy food,” Herszenhorn said.
“There’s a first-mover disadvantage of if you’re one retailer and you sell more loose, [with] a whole generation getting used to buying packed products, it will reduce sales and people will go to a different retailer. That’s why we’re saying that there’s a policy opportunity that if fruit and veg in packaging for 21 really commonly waste items could be banned that would level the playing field and enable a different set of behaviour.”
