Press release
20th Oct, 2020
Olam’s AtSource Wins 2020 Reuters Responsible Supply Chain Award
Revolutionary sustainability insights platform showcases how social and environmental risks are being managed and monitored
London
AtSource, a revolutionary sustainability insights platform developed by global food and agri-business Olam to provide actionable data for manufacturing and retail customers of the third-party supply chains for products like coffee, cocoa, cashew, cotton, and rice, has just won the 2020 Reuters Responsible Supply Chain Award.
The Reuters Responsible Business Awards recognise leading strategies shaping the future of sustainable business. The judging panel, drawn from business, media, NGOs, and academia, said of Olam's winning submission:
“AtSource is a highly innovative and scalable plus well-established model that allows Olam's customers - for the first time – to track the social and environmental footprint of a product from the farmer group, to their factory gate. It uses 150 economic, social and environmental metrics, bringing transparency to what has
Press release
25th Aug, 2020
COVID-19 impacts on small-scale farmers underline the need for building resilience
London
While global food supply chains may be starting to heal from the COVID-19 pandemic, food and agri-business Olam International underlines the importance of addressing the long-term wellness and operational resilience needs of those small-scale farmers in emerging markets who provide much of the world’s ingredients and raw materials.
A survey undertaken by Olam in July of 2,400 of smallholder farmers growing cocoa, coffee, sesame, cotton, and other crops in Africa and Indonesia, revealed that more than half were experiencing shortages in basic food and nutrition due to movement restrictions, food price increases and insufficient stocks at home*. Ability to afford food was impacted with 70% of those farmers surveyed saying they had less income than usual in the prior four months.
While spread of the virus in Africa seems to be gradual, according to the International Rescue Committee limitations in data collection and shortages in testing infrastructure mean that the numbers ma
Blog
1st Dec, 2020
A Sustainable, Equitable Food System Needs to be Nourished at the Source
COVID-19 has exposed many of the vulnerabilities in our food system, one of which is just how reliant global supply chains are on people’s well-being at every step of the journey. The small-scale farmers in emerging markets who produce much of the world’s food ingredients, live in countries that face high rates of malnutrition, with many farming households unable to eat healthily themselves.
The strong link between health and agricultural productivity is one of the reasons nutrition has moved up the sustainability agenda for Olam. Malnutrition is said to cost the private sector as much as $850 billion a year in lost productivity, according to a recent Chatham House reporti, with much of this borne by the ag sector given the labour intensity of farming. So as a business that plans to run efficiently for the next 30, 50 years and beyond, helping to reduce malnutrition in the communities where we operate is actually a down payment on future productivity.
Financial incentive aside,
Blog
5th Jul, 2019
Untying gender constraints, the cooperative way
Elegantly clad in a zebra-printed cotton dress, Outtara Aminata’s joyful demeanour belies a life most would consider tough, but which she has taken in her stride. Her story could be an inspiration for many seeking a better life for their families.
The 37-year old lives in a remote village of 500 people in the north of Côte d'Ivoire. Up at 5am, she used to only do the unremitting back-breaking work of maintaining a household. Now Aminita is also a smallholder cotton farmer. She took on her second, and only paying “job”, three years ago and has never been happier.
“Everything is different! My life is completely different. My children can now go to school because I can pay school fees. I didn’t even have one good dress before,” said Aminata, gesturing to the zebra print dress she and others in the Benkadi Women’s Association wear in her village of Tchewelevogo.
She is one of the 227 women farmers who have been recruited into cooperatives by Olam’s International’s cotton arm, SECO (
