ESG practices in agriculture: the importance of sustainable certifications

ESG is a corporate aspect that is here to stay! The acronym is in English and stands for "Environmental, Social and Governance", which translated into Portuguese means Environment, Social and Governance. It was spoken for the first time in 2004, by the UN Secretary General, who debated how to integrate these concerns into the capital market as a way of encouraging large businesspeople to have greater social responsibility.

In summary, the “E”, for environment, deals with climate change, restriction of water resources, increased pollution and loss of diversity. Companies can take actions that help combat and minimize these threats.

The “S”, for social, involves human rights, worker rights, impact of rural property on the community, responsibility towards customers, health and safety of employees and diversity.

Finally, the “G”, for governance, deals with transparency, ethics, aspects related to relationships with shareholders, risk management, long-term planning, among others.

Since then, ESG has been applied around the world and, over time, consumers are increasingly informed and concerned about the set of values ​​that companies employ. And in Agribusiness it couldn’t be any different!

Some practical actions related to the ESG agenda that can be adopted in Brazilian agribusiness are: strict compliance with labor and forestry legislation, traceability of the value chain, investment in technologies, reduction of carbon emissions, conscious use of natural resources, assessment of the impact of farm in society and more transparent leadership.

All of these actions are linked, in some way, to sustainable certifications. Therefore, an effective way to apply ESG guidelines in Agriculture is through these certifications, which already exist for soybean, corn and cotton crops.

To implement them, rural producers must have structured legal advice to help them comply with all the items required by the certifying company.

So, in partnership with a trustworthy and specialized lawyer in the field, sustainable certifications are a very interesting and highly effective way for rural producers to apply ESG guidelines to their properties and, thus, maintain their competitiveness and leverage results.

By Nayara Marcato Sanders, Marcato Sanders Advocacy