David Willers
General Manager of the Better Sugarcane Initiative, whose mission is to ensure that current and new sugarcane is produced sustainably. bsi.willers@btinternet.com
A quiet revolution is underway in the world of sugar and ethanol, as the biggest consumers and producers of core products from sugarcane finally work together to improve the environmental impact of this essential feedstock.
Sugarcane has historically had a bad press, accused of all kinds of dubious social and farm practices. This may have been true in past decades, but there has been an incredibly rapid modernisation of the industry in the best managed sugarcane centres, prompted in part by the never-ceasing search for production efficiencies on the one hand, and by consumer demands that the products they are buying are ethically and above all sustainably sourced.
The corporate social responsibility desires of the majority of the big end and intermediate user companies have played a role, but then it is also true that many of the better sugar industries have dramatically and voluntarily improved their production climate at all levels. Countries like Mauritius, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Columbia and a host of others come to mind, and there are many more, as any familiarity with the world of the International Sugar Organisation (ISO) can testify.
What has been lacking is a common standard for sugarcane production that embodies social, agricultural and processing/milling targets in one simple document, and that is now being achieved with the BSI standard.
Anyone who knows the sugarcane industry will also know that there is general resistance to standards that are seen as prescriptive on the one hand, and possibly a precursor to phytosanitary trade barriers on the other. Farmers are famously allergic to being told by outsiders how to manage their farms, and sugar farmers are no exception.
For all these reasons, the original founding members of the BSI, when they first met in 2005 to discuss the concept of a better sugar roundtable which could produce a single standard, determined that if there was going to be buy-in by the producers, the standard would have to be non-prescriptive and the benefits to producers would need to be clear.
A repeated concern expressed by producers was that a need to meet standards would impose reporting and measurement demands which soak up manpower, time and money. Consequently benefits had to be identified which would include: a means of self-assessment and performance improvement demonstration; a means of benchmarking against others; some credits as a premium for producing sugar sustainably; and a way of facilitating trade. And for industries already meeting the conditions there would have to be a levelling of the playing fields in terms of meeting environmental and labour related issues; management of risk and liability; and enhancement of brand image and reputation.
In the long run it is expected that conforming to the BSI standard will save money, as inputs such as energy and raw material are used more efficiently, losses and wastage are minimized and manpower is used more productively. It is certainly one of the objectives of BSI to achieve a system of standards which result in benefits to producers which outweigh any costs.
But identifying producer benefits was only the first challenge for BSI. A more pressing preoccupation was how one went about constructing an international standard in the first place. Certainly, there were a few precedents – the Soy, Cotton and Palm Oil Roundtables were already in place – but as we soon discovered, one couldn’t simply clone their structures and processes. Each feedstock has its own demands and peculiar quirks and sugarcane is classic in respect.
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And then there were such issues as - why not include sugar beet? After all, at least a quarter of the world's sugar output came from this source. But sugar beet is a subsidised crop and sugarcane is not, and the general feeling of members was that one could not have a truly sustainable agricultural commodity if it was necessary to subsidise it in the first place.
Logically, since sugarcane would continually improve its production efficiencies and become even more violable, it was the crop of the future and sugar beet would invariably go into decline. This is in fact proving to be the case. Sugarcane cultivation in the probability that some millions more hectares of land may come under sugarcane cultivation in the foreseeable future to satisfy ethanol and sugar demand, is the central focus of the BSI.
The BSI's website www.bettersugarcane.org details the myriad key steps taken to convert the original academic discussion of 2005 into practice. By 2007 the general principles of a standard had been agreed, followed by the essential criteria and indicators in 2008. There are no more than 60 indicators and they capture all the core concerns such as labour, social, climate change, pollution, high conservation value land use etc. The BSI decided on a metric approach to its standard. The Standard measures impacts numerically and by catchment area and it does not prescribe how farmers should farm to reach the target values. It leaves this up to the implementation of locally developed Better Management Practices (BMP's).
BSI has deliberately chosen to use measurable indicators. Great importance is attached to devising metrics (the numbers that can be put to each of the indicators). It is assumed that credibility comes with metrics, without metrics, certification programs can become subjective rather than science-based. However choosing the appropriate metrics is not simple. The metrics employed may vary radically in the degree to which they capture the full character of an individual effect. Some effects are intrinsically more readily quantifiable than others for example - particulate emissions vs. aesthetic landscape.
Nonetheless, the task has been accomplished, and how successfully is something readers may judge for themselves. This year, (2009) the standard is being advertised internationally for comment (www.bettersugarcane.com) which will be evaluated by the expert teams who drew up version 1. Version 2 will be published for further comment in September and final approval will be sought from the all selected BSI management committee and supervisory board in early November at the BSI's AGM. Full member elections were held in March 2009 under the rules of international standard and labeling bodies such as ISEAL who have protocols rules which ensure transparency and integrity in the standard setting process.
At the same time BSI is construction a certification model and by March next year (2010) we hope to be certifying the first sugar and ethanol cargoes under the BSI label. Standard bearer producers like Brazil and India have already secured considerable kudos by early recognising the importance of the BSI as providing a level playing field in environmental terms while providing a practical, robust standard, easy to audit, which will facilitate trade in ethanol and sugar.
A full list of our members is on the website and many of the biggest corporate names are to be found there. Many other companies are exploring the cost benefits of BSI membership, the savings to be made is not having to develop their own sustainable standard, but leaving it to professionals in the field instead; and above all, knowing that they are at the cutting edge of the world's first metric agricultural standard developed by an entirely non-profit body, completely dedicated to genuinely mitigating the effects of sugarcane production with the full cooperation of major producers.
summer 2009 volume 4 issue 2 | www.foodethicscouncil.org
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