Giving Compass' Take:

• Olam International recently announced AtSource, its supply chain tracking program that it plans to use on all of its products by 2025 to increase transparency and improve sustainability. 

• How can other organization use this model to improve their processes? How else can CSR improve sustainability? 

• Learn about accelerating ethical recruitment in supply chains.

More companies are feeling the pressure to ensure their supply chains are minimizing their environmental and social impacts. To that end, Olam International recently announced what it calls AtSource – a traceable sourcing solution the company says will offer insights into the journey raw materials take from farms to consumers’ shopping carts. Based in Singapore and operating in 66 nations, Olam is among the globe’s largest supplier of cocoa, coffee, rice, and cotton.

How can this create a “net positive impact?”

Many companies are making demanding commitments within a framework of “do less harm.” But this is not scaled to the challenge, because if we all continue to “do less harm” on a bigger and bigger scale, ultimately, we will continue to do harm. Instead, what we need to do is have a net-positive impact, which means putting back more into farming systems than we take out. In concrete terms, this means drawing down more carbon dioxide than we release, building back organic matter into the soil, restoring and regenerating natural ecosystems within farming landscapes, raising water tables, and regulating the flow of water – not just minimizing the abstraction of water.

On the social side, it means that we need to address not just the symptoms of farmer poverty in developing nations, but also understand the root cause of poverty in that community. Getting to the root of the problem and then working on reducing and halting the negative impacts is at the heart of this net-positive model.

Read the full interview with Simon Brayn Smith and Dr. Christopher Stewart about AtSource by Leon Kaye at TriplePundit.