IDH to convene global leaders at SUTRA 2024: shaping the future of sustainable trade

SUTRA 2.0 - The Sustainable Trade Summit 2024

In recent years, sustainable trade has assumed significant importance basis a profound realisation across businesses, governments, and civil society organisations, that a business’ sustainability strategy, approach and outcomes hold only as good as the social, economic and environmental benefits that accrue in the supply and value chains. This is more so when it comes to agri-commodities and their value chains, where much of the food production is by smallholder farmers, working on small parcels of land.Small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land account for 86.2% of all farmers in India, but own just 47.3% of the crop area, according to provisional numbers from the 10th agriculture census 2015-16. In comparison, semi-medium and medium land holding farmers owning between 2-10 hectares of land account for 13.2% of all farmers, but own 43.6% of crop area, the survey showed.

With such large numbers of smallholders in the supply and value chains, companies can’t afford to ignore their present situation in terms of their falling agricultural productivity, lessening earning potential, lack of safe agricultural practices (with balanced used of chemical inputs), access to quality agricultural inputs, crop diversification generating additional earning potential, among other issues and challenges.Thus, creating responsible supply chains is the need of the hour, though it remains to be seen how geared up are companies to attend to this challenge and how much of active work they can implement to reduce their scope 3 carbon emissions which come from their supply chains.