A Roadmap to Responsible Soy: approaches to increase certification and reduce risk

Soy is one of the world’s most important and profitable agricultural commodities. But it is also controversial because its production is associated with significant environmental and social problems including deforestation and poor working conditions.

The production of soy is soaring as global population growth and increasing wealth in the developing world drive demand. But as production grows, so do the industry’s environmental and social impacts.

A Roadmap to Responsible Soy highlights that only 2 to 3% of soy production is currently certified as responsibly-produced. Responsible production in soy lags far behind other commodities such as palm oil, cocoa and coffee. This brings reputational and commercial risks to end users including manufacturers of food, animal feed and biofuel. Global NGO and activist campaigns have targeted palm oil in recent years, but attention is also being paid to soy.

The paper identifies four key barriers to mainstreaming responsible soy production, presents a roadmap to overcome them and a framework of actions to assist companies in developing an effective response strategy.
A Roadmap to Responsible Soy is published in collaboration with the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), WWF, FMO (the Netherlands Development Finance Company) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

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