118: SDG 2 and the role of the private sector in sustainable development: Chris Argent, Head of Sustainability & Corporate Affairs, AMEA, Syngenta

The Elephant in the Room

Shownotes:

Most people would agree that sustainability is a much-abused word. It has become a catch call phrase for individuals and businesses keen on asserting their ‘good for society/good for planet credentials’. As we hurtle towards 2030, the reality is that the private sector has a pivotal role to play in helping to meet the SDGs. Cynicism aside, behind the rhetoric and noise, there is serious effort by some businesses to integrate it into their business strategy.

A couple of weeks back, I spoke with Chris Argent, Head of Sustainability for AMEA at Syngenta (A leader in agricultural innovation) to understand the role of the private sector in global food security (SDG 2), on innovations that can catalyse change and help improve the lives and livelihoods of farmers (especially marginal farmers).

According to the World Economic Forum, ‘the global food security challenge is straightforward: by 2050 the world must feed two billion people more and the demand for food will be 56% greater than 2010.’ The sector also accounts for a whopping 30% of greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of freshwater withdrawals, so there is also the need for adoption of innovative practices to be more sustainable.

What is the private sector doing to address SDG 2? How are businesses transforming and innovating for sustainable development? Chris covered some of the issues during our conversation👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

👉🏾 The link between purpose, profit and sustainability

👉🏾 How organisations can be authentic when speaking about purpose or sustainability

👉🏾 What it means to be a leader in agricultural innovation for Syngenta?

👉🏾 The impact of climate change on small and marginal farmers who make up majority of the world’s farmers and produce over 70-80% of the world’s food (UN FAO 2021)

👉🏾 The ‘Good Growth Plan’ (Indian context) a time bound target to reduce its carbon intensity by 50% by 2030 from a 2016 baseline

👉🏾 The Portfolio Sustainability Framework aimed at increasing transparency to external stakeholders

👉🏾 Changing food preferences and growing trend for sustainably grown food

We also spoke about sustainability narratives, reporting, communications and much more.

Global non-profit EAT, “Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth”

To hear more, head to the podcast (Link in comments) 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Episode Transcript:

Sudha: Good morning, Chris. It's wonderful to have you as a guest on The Elephant in the Room Podcast today. Thank you for being here.

Chris: Thanks very much Sudha for inviting me to join. Looking forward to the discussion.

Sudha: Brilliant. Let's start with a quick introduction. So, you've moved from politics to external affairs and then sustainability. How has the journey been?

Chris: That's a great question. Things have certainly evolved in terms of sustainability over that period. As you mentioned, I started my career in Australian politics working in various roles for about seven years before moving to the private sector. And certainly, in that early days of sustainability, it certainly wasn't high on corporate's agenda. But over that time it has very much come to the fore, which I think is great for the community, for business and also for the environment.

It really started with the development of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and it's certainly progressed from there.

Sudha: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like a very interesting journey, and I'm sure there have been lots of learnings that you can now use in your current role.

So, I listened to a podcast where you spoke about purpose, profit and sustainability. This is something I'm very passionate about. my consultancy is called The Purpose Room. Both purpose and sustainability have become sort of buzzwords for organisations keen to show their commitment to a bigger, cause to a bigger purpose. So how can organisations show up, authentically when they speak about purpose or sustainability without somebody groaning on the sidelines?

Chris: Yeah, thanks for the question. I think authenticity is the key word that you just mentioned there Sudha. I think sustainability and sustainable operations throughout the business world and beyond are critically important to some of the key issues that we face as a community at the moment. And certainly, two that very important to Syngenta, which as I'm sure your listeners would know, is one of the biggest agribusiness companies in the world, where we sell seeds and crop protection products to farmers. And so, food security and climate change are two incredibly important big issues that the world faces, and that certainly not only impacts our industry, we believe that we can be part of a very complex solution to these issues and so authenticity is critical.

And I think we've all heard of many companies falling foul of accusations of greenwashing and certainly I think many companies perhaps were keen to demonstrate that they were doing something in the purpose space.

But I think critically, and this is fundamental to sustainability at Syngenta, it can't be separate from your business strategy. Sustainability needs to be part of the business strategy. If it's business and sustainability, I think it can be seen as an add on or an afterthought or even a cost rather than an investment.

And the private sector has a critical role to play in these big issues. And so that's where, I guess, where purpose meets profit, is to me the foundation of where the answer may lie. Private businesses are in service to their consumers and shareholders, but also increasingly consumers and shareholders expect the private sector to be in service of something bigger, and that's where the purpose comes in.

But if it's not profitable, if we can't find that sweet spot between purpose and profit, it becomes outside that that private sector space. And I think if we can find those areas where profit meets purpose in a meaningful way, that's how we can really drive the agenda forward and drive change. And I think it starts with being part of the business strategy, which is the approach that we take at Syngenta.

Sudha: Very well-articulated there and what is interesting that you're saying is it should not be an add on because so far it has been an add on for businesses. I think for decades it's been like yeah, you do some philanthropy and CSR and that's something that you're doing just a bit on the side. I think companies are definitely finding it difficult to, like you said, to make it an essential part of the business.

So, your boiler plate reads Syngenta Crop Protection is a leader in agricultural innovation. What does leader mean? Leadership has been redefined so many times in the past couple of years, I'd say. What are your aspirations as a leader for Syngenta? Is it size, scale, innovation or purpose?

Chris: Yeah, sitting on the fence, Sudha, I think it's part of all of those things and certainly going back to the point I made before about the importance of profitability in the broader scheme of the pursuit of purpose. So certainly, we seek to be a leader in the industry and I think that leaves us best placed to help farmers with the challenges of growing more food, with less impact on the environment.

I mean, that's a critical important challenge that I mentioned before. So, there's all that leadership in terms of how we listen to farmers. I mean, farmers being at the centre of everything we do, how do we understand the challenges that they're facing? And agriculture is tremendously diverse and if I think about the region that I'm responsible for Asia, Middle East and Africa, we have large scale industrial farming, and then we have a lot of smallholder farmers who trying to make a living and support themselves and their community with one hectare or less of, land to farm on.

There's lots of different challenges across that region. But I think finding a common way to understand what farmers are looking for in terms of solutions to their problem is one approach we take. So, there's that leadership. There's leadership in terms of innovation, which in terms of buzzword Sudha is another one that I would contend is thrown around a lot at the moment.

And innovation can mean a lot, it can mean technological innovation and certainly from our product development approach, that's a big part of what we mean by innovation. But it's also about innovative ways to deal with what is very complex in terms of food security and climate change, and the role that agriculture plays in that.

And so how can we be innovative in the solutions that we provide, not just from a product perspective, but also through partnerships with broader solutions for some of these issues. If you look at the emissions contribution of agriculture, products themselves play some part in helping to minimize that, but it's more about on farm practices, innovative ways to drive change at the farm level.

And that can be, complicated purely and simply because going back to the profit and purpose thing we talked about before, we need to find ways to make sustainable agriculture, not just sustainable, but also the best and most profitable form of agriculture, again, to drive that change at scale.

I think we are making some progress there, but we can't do that alone, so long way to answer your question, but in terms of a leader I think trying to take the initiative across all these various things that can drive the change that's required in this industry, but also keeping farmers at the centre of how we approach this. And last thing I would say too, is being a leading workplace in terms of how we encourage diversity inclusion, how we encourage people to speak up and have their say about issues that they are passionate about to drive that ongoing improvement.

And I know that a number of the country teams in my part of the world have been recognized as leading employers in that space, which I think is a part of the entire puzzle for Syngenta.

Sudha: Yeah, leadership is not just about one thing, it is about various pieces that all come together to make a company a leader. We've covered some of the stuff around, drivers for sustainability when we were talking about purpose and profit. So, we move to the next question on the ‘good growth plan’ that is linked to your sustainability efforts.

I understand it is particularly relevant to India. Could you share a bit more about it?

Chris: Yeah, the good growth plans been in place for more than 10 years now, and I think it was certainly back to that leadership point. It was taking a step forward for the industry in terms of really defining and quantifying the steps that we thought Syngenta could take as a company to pursue sustainability as part of the business.

And it certainly evolved and was updated about three years ago with some new targets to, acknowledge that things have progressed. And so that was really the aspiration for all of our country operations. And it covered things that are still important to us in terms of the importance of soil health, the importance of safe use training for all farmers that we can get in contact with about how to use products in the best and most sustainable way to protect themselves, of course, but also to get the most out of those products. And certainly, India is a really important market for Syngenta and certainly a country where agriculture is such a huge part of the economy and social fabric of that country.

Finding ways to use that foundation to drive sustainable agricultural outcomes was certainly a big ambition of the India team. And I think they've done and continue to do a great job. Just focusing on a couple of examples of that, as I mentioned before, soil health. I mean, if you think about sustainability and agriculture, it really all starts with how we take care of the soil to ensure that it can continue to be fertile and provide that foundation for crops for as long as we possibly can. And there's a big awareness part in relation to this, I think everyone intuitively understands that the health of the soil is critical, but what exactly about the soil?

How can we understand what the baseline is and what approaches can be taken to improve that. And some simple things, but very effective that we did in India is in relation to soil health testing and providing those tests to farmers, particularly in relation to rice growing. And then providing recommendations in partnership with the university about how to apply the right amount of fertilizer at the right time to ensure that the soil health was being protected and that yields would also benefit.

And this had fairly swift, but also impressive results in terms of yield, and of course, yield is linked to livelihood. If a farmer can apply less in terms of inputs, get more in terms of yield, and also the quality improvements, then that leads to higher prices for farmers. And so, these are some of the examples of the Good Growth Plan in India.

One last thing I'd say about the Good Growth Plan is we've now recently launched for the first time Syngenta Group's Global Sustainability Priorities and that builds on the foundation of the Good Growth Plan and really focuses on the key issues of higher yields with lower impact, and that means environmental as well as protecting the safety of the farmers, regenerate soil and nature improving rural prosperity, which is very important when you consider agriculture because agriculture is often really a foundational part of prosperity in rural communities throughout the world.

And lastly, about our own sustainable operations, really ensuring that we have a focus on reducing our own footprint in terms of emissions, as well as how we can move that forward. So good growth plan was the foundation, the sustainability priorities that were released in April this year build upon that.

And I think really sets us up to hopefully in partnership, drive further change for farmers, for food security and for the environment.

Sudha: All very essential pieces if you are to consider that the farming community, rural farmers make a huge chunk of the Indian population and they contribute to the GDP, but their own prosperity is also linked to all of this. And it is essential for them if we as a country are to grow at a certain rate that the small farmers are able to be prosperous and all of it is so interlinked.

So interesting to hear all of this. Moving on all conversations around sustainability start with climate change and global warming. Should the starting point not just be people and the challenges they face. Because we're speaking about ‘just transition’, but just transition starts with thinking about where the planet is going and where we are going to be 10 years later in 2030 or 2050.

Why don't we start with people and the challenges that they are facing. What are your thoughts on this?

Chris: Yeah, it's a really interesting point and I think we need to do both. But I would certainly agree that focusing on the challenges for people, because it's people at the end of the day that drive action and drive change.

But if I think about the urgency of the change in terms of food security and climate change, as I mentioned, having that broader topic set at that global agenda can really help to encourage that action. Because I think also if we focus too much on the bigger picture, maybe it gets a little paralyzing too, because, it is enormous, it is critical and it is urgent. And so it's important that, that is setting the scene for action. But then we focus on how people can drive change. And as I mentioned before, that's why it's certainly at Syngenta having the farmer at the centre of everything, because without the input of farmers, without the enrolment of farmers, it's almost impossible to drive change.

And so that's why that's such a big focus for the company because without that action at the farm level then those broader topics and concerns are going to be even harder to have an impact on, so that's also where it becomes, again, complicated. I know I'm highlighting some complications, but we are talking about very complex things here and trying to simplify it can be beneficial.

Why should, let's be very frank, why should an individual farmer who's done things a certain way for a certain period of time and had pretty good results change unless there is a personal motive for change beyond that bigger picture. Because again, particularly in Asia and Africa, we are talking about smallholders and so change is risky. And the impacts of that going wrong can be very detrimental in terms of their own food security and their own livelihoods. So, we need to find a way of finding value and I mean, value in the broadest sense of that word, not just financial value, but sure, that's important. But what can we do to demonstrate the value for change to happen?

And it comes down at the heart of your question, Sudha, it comes down to people and how we can together build a change that can have the impact we need.

Sudha: Yeah, so the farmers have to be motivated to actually come on board. And I don't think there's too much that is required other than engagement and a little bit of awareness.

And definitely because of food security and their own personal security livelihoods, they are more likely to be on board.

Chris: Yeah, but also when you're talking about 450 million smallholders in Asia and Africa that's a lot of people. And it takes a huge amount of resources to be able to interact with all of them and a company, even a small company of our size is unable to have that direct contact with such a large number of farmers. It's also finding progressive farmers who want to try something new and can drive change and then they can become the role model to really drive that change further beyond