The Net Zero Procurement Playbook - Part 4/5: Tackling Agricultural Emissions
- sobrunelle
- Mar 24
- 4 min read
Welcome to the fourth article in our five-part series on how procurement can drive organisations toward their net zero targets. After exploring renewable electricity, transportation, and manufacturing, we'll now focus on a critical but often overlooked lever: agriculture. As a procurement professional, your decisions about agricultural sourcing can significantly impact both emissions and soil health, making you a key player in the fight against climate change.
Understanding Agricultural Emissions: A Tale of Two Systems
To make effective procurement decisions, you need to understand how different agricultural practices impact emissions. Let's explore the contrast between conventional and regenerative agriculture:
The Challenge with Conventional Agriculture
Today's conventional farming practices present significant challenges for both emissions and soil health. The widespread use of annual crops, which die after one season, means shorter root systems that contribute to soil erosion and carbon release. This problem is compounded by the prevalence of monocultures, where growing the same crops in the same places year after year steadily depletes soil nutrients. To compensate for deteriorating soil quality, farmers rely heavily on chemical fertilisers produced using fossil fuels, creating a vicious cycle of dependency. The result is agricultural soil that contains merely 1% carbon content, making it more akin to fuel than a living ecosystem. This degraded state not only contributes to emissions but also reduces the land's resilience to climate changes and extreme weather events.
The Promise of Regenerative Agriculture
Regenerative agriculture offers a transformative alternative that you can support through your procurement decisions. By eliminating pesticides and fungicides in favour of natural pest management, these practices work with nature rather than against it. Multi-layered agroforestry, where multiple species grow together, creates diverse, resilient ecosystems that support both biodiversity and soil health. When farmers allow biomass from each year's harvest to remain on the ground, these nutrients are naturally reabsorbed into the earth, building soil health over time. Through these practices, soil carbon content can rise to 3%, creating a self-renewing ecosystem that not only reduces emissions but actively sequesters carbon. This approach transforms agricultural land from a source of emissions into a carbon sink, while often providing farmers with multiple income streams and more resilient crops.
Forest Protection: A Critical Component
Your procurement decisions can help protect crucial forest ecosystems. Here's what you need to know:
Understanding Deforestation and Conversion
When developing your procurement policies, distinguish between:
Deforestation: loss of natural forest through conversion to agriculture, tree plantations, or severe degradation
Conversion: change of natural ecosystems to another land use or profound changes in species composition.
In a nutshell, deforestation is a type of conversion.
Implementing a Forest Positive Approach
Your organisation can make a difference through these five key commitments:
1. Public commitment and action plan
Make a clear 'deforestation and conversion-free' commitment
Develop time-bound action plans
Set specific milestones
Communicate your goals publicly
2. Non-compliance management
Establish clear mechanisms to identify non-compliance
Develop suspension criteria
Create re-entry requirements
Maintain transparent processes
3. Supplier engagement
Regularly engage with suppliers to improve traceability
Understand current practices
Support improvement initiatives
Build long-term partnerships
4. Landscape level action
Support forest positive development initiatives
Engage in sectoral programmes
Participate in landscape-level projects
Collaborate with other stakeholders
5. Regular reporting
Report against clear Key Performance Indicators
Maintain transparency in progress
Share challenges and learnings
Celebrate successes
Your Action Plan: Making It Happen
To transform these principles into practice:
1. Assess your current impact
Map your agricultural supply chains
Identify high-risk commodities
Evaluate current supplier practices
Establish your baseline
2. Set clear requirements
Develop specific sourcing criteria
Create supplier assessment tools
Establish traceability requirements
Define performance metrics
3. Engage your supply chain
Communicate your expectations clearly
Support supplier transition periods
Provide training and resources
Build collaborative relationships
4. Monitor and verify
Implement tracking systems
Conduct regular audits
Verify compliance claims
Document improvements
Measuring Success
The effectiveness of your agricultural procurement strategy extends far beyond simple metrics of cost and delivery. Success in this arena requires a comprehensive view that encompasses both environmental and social impacts.
Your measurement framework should track the steady increase in deforestation-free commodities across your supply chain, while monitoring the growing adoption of regenerative practices among your suppliers. Pay particular attention to improvements in soil carbon content, as this serves as a key indicator of long-term success. Biodiversity indicators will help you understand the broader environmental impact of your sourcing decisions, while traceability achievements ensure you can verify and communicate your progress confidently.
Together, these measurements create a holistic picture of your organisation's journey toward sustainable agricultural procurement. If you want to know more about how to set meaningful responsible sourcing KPIs, check out our article here.
As a procurement professional, you have the power to transform agricultural practices through your sourcing decisions. While the challenges may seem complex, remember that each step toward regenerative agriculture and forest protection contributes to both emissions’ reduction and ecosystem health.
Stay tuned for our final article, where we'll explore how procurement can drive emissions reductions in buildings and construction.
Need help developing your sustainable agricultural procurement strategy? Our team of experts is ready to help you create and implement a tailored approach for your organisation. Contact us at info@beeaware-consulting.com or through our contact form to start transforming your agricultural sourcing practices.
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