Insights

An organization’s risk management strategy may be only as good as its commitment to sustainable sourcing. Now is the time to re-focus or adapt sustainability programs to better prepare for the future and address the next crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequalities.

Trust, transparency, traceability. Scorecards and dashboards. We offer our take on the top trends for 2021

Coffee sourcing trips to origin instilled in Carli Rosencranz a deep passion for the concerns of smallholder coffee farmers, and that is good news for COSA.

To successfully address global issues like deforestation requires a multi-dimensional landscape approach that learns and listens to people on the ground in ways that can leverage real change.

“During my time at RA and Utz I got to see COSA’s work first hand,” says Han de Groot. Highly regarded as a sustainability champion, his profound understanding of certifications adds an important dimension to COSA’s Board of Directors.

Some of the innovative work in sustainability from the IDB Lab demonstrate ways to achieve new levels of collective impact for donors and businesses.

The Sustainable Food Lab’s Stephanie Daniels, our expert guest author, explains why companies should think about what Living Income or a Living Wage means for their business accountability and the stability of their supply chains.

A key to scaling the understanding and measure of Living Income in any context is to balance rigor and practicality so that it can be more widely adopted. We are getting closer to that in global, agricultural contexts.

COSA is working closely with Mars and the Farmer Income Lab to develop optimal metrics to help ensure a science-based yet down-to-earth perspective around reasonable income for farmer-suppliers.

Businesses and NGOs have an opportunity to better understand the challenges of farm communities, and reorient global value chains to deliver greater benefits to their producers.