Olam International launches new technology to boost agricultural sustainability
Olam International, the world’s third-largest agri-businesses, has launched AtSource, a new technology which will obtain supply chain insight and data to drive change for farmers, rural communities and the planet.
Launched ahead of World Environment Day on 5 June, the solution aims to give environmental and social insights into the journey of agricultural materials and food ingredients.
The sustainable and traceable sourcing platform will provide data through a digital dashboard to track the social and environmental footprint of a product.
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In doing so, it will help Olam International assess and positively influence the environmental footprint of the 4.7mn farmers in its supply chain, the majority of which are smallholders growing crops like cocoa, coffee and cashews in emerging markets.
“Leading companies in the food sector have been investing significantly in social and environmental programmes to source their raw materials more sustainably, but change is not happening fast enough,” noted Sunny Verghese, Co-Founder and Group CEO of Olam.
“In the current context, I would say it is impossible to state how much of the world’s food supply can be considered truly sustainable. It is the old adage that if we cannot measure it, we cannot improve it.
“AtSource will provide our customers with the most comprehensive sustainable supply solution for their raw materials. With AtSource we can now deliver the critical sustainability factors for the long-term resilience of a crop or ingredient from a particular producing country or region.
“Using this information we can drive meaningful improvements through the supply chain from farm to customer. Make no mistake, capturing this information at scale and across all our supply chains will be a huge and costly task.
"But as the company closest to the farmer, we believe AtSource is a key driver in helping us to re-imagine global agriculture, by starting to mainstream sustainability before it is too late.”
