Case studies – Traceability

Following their participation in the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), Tesco piloted the TNFD’s LEAP (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, and Prepare) approach to identify and assess nature-related issues. 

Supported by Nature-Based Insights and Global Canopy and using Trase Earth’s supply chains tool, the pilot focussed on mapping Tesco’s oil palm supply chain and identifying priority locations in Indonesia for further analysis.

Following an analysis of mill lists and procurement volumes from seven of Tesco’s oil palm suppliers, sourcing volumes associated with around 120 Indonesian districts were identified.

Land area footprints were calculated for each district, these were overlaid with indicators for deforestation risk, lack of certification, the proportion of land managed by smallholders, and nature’s contribution to people in order to identify areas as priorities for further engagement.

The full case study is available from Global Canopy here. 

Cargill’s annual ESG reports contain dedicated chapters on soy and provide more details on how Cargill recently mapped the soy supply chain of their direct suppliers to the farm level. 

This involved extensive survey work by their sustainability and commercial teams to gather information about the thousands of suppliers within Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. 

Teams used a tool known as Survey123 from ArcGIS to catalog information about each supplier and link them to farm polygons from public databases. 20,000 polygons were identified in total. Cargill is now verifying the amount of volume produced by each farm to guarantee that they have mapped all the volumes received from each country.  

When direct suppliers deliver soy to Cargill, they must now identify the farm polygon where the soy was produced. Cargill cross-references the delivered volumes with average soy yields from that area to ensure a supplier isn’t attributing more volumes to a polygon than is reasonable. 

The percentage of soy volumes directly sourced from suppliers whose farms have been polygon mapped now stands at 99% for Argentina, 75% for Bolivia, 100% for Brazil, 96% for Paraguay, and 100% for Uruguay. Their soy dashboard publishes the proportion of direct and indirect suppliers per country; the percentage of sourced volumes estimated to be deforestation and conversion-free (DCF); and, provides information on farms blocked from their supply chains.  

For more information on Cargill’s approach to DCF risk assessment and how they identify and deal with non-compliant farms please see the case studies for Risk Assessments.