Archer Daniels Midland

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives that cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company reports a list of trade associations of which it is a member. It has an opportunity to further disclose a full list for all geographies where it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company’s stakeholder engagement activities cover the material parts of its value chain. It engages with stakeholders in the nature, nutrition, and social areas.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process in relation to its sustainability strategy. Furthermore, it reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company is working to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and has set a target with a fixed timeline for achieving this. Progress towards these targets is regularly monitored and reported by the company. Additionally, the company has established a time-bound goal to reduce its scope 3 emissions.

Ecosystem conversion
The company’s conversion-free target covers all its high-risk commodities. It also has time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains. Furthermore, the company discloses the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company discloses targets to optimise the use of fertilisers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices. It also reports progress against them.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities and targets to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices. It also reports progress against the targets. The company works with farmers to implement regenerative farming programs including the use of cover crops, reduced or no-tillage, nitrogen reduction and efficiency programs, integrated pest management, and diverse crop rotations.

Water withdrawal
The company demonstrates its commitment to reducing water withdrawal in its own operations. It has set a specific time-bound target to achieve this and consistently reports its progress towards meeting this target.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company provides evidence of its activities aimed at enhancing post-harvest management of grains and oilseeds. In collaboration with the University of Illinois, ADM has been working to improve post-harvest management of grains and oilseeds to reduce poverty and food insecurity by generating knowledge, scaling improved technologies, and building institutional capacity.

Forced labour
The company prohibits the payment of any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job. It also does not retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement in its operations.

Land rights
The company is committed to respecting the ownership, use of land, and natural resources, as well as related legitimate tenure rights. It states that it respects land-tenure rights as well as the rights of indigenous and local communities to give or withhold their free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) to operations on lands to which they hold legal or customary rights.

Act ethically
The company discloses income tax payments for all its tax jurisdictions as well as its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a policy statement. Moreover, it  has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, along with a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers, and it expects its business relationships to have the same commitment. It also discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships.

Furthermore, the company reports the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category. It also discloses a target to achieve gender parity in its senior leadership team by 2030 and currently has 36% of women on the board.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and ILO core labour rights, as well as expecting suppliers to respect the ILO core labour rights. Furthermore, it describes the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in its supply chain and engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. The company also indicates that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and all external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
While the company states that the board of directors has expertise in areas such as climate, nutrition, social inclusion, and water, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to other key material sustainability topics such as biodiversity, ecosystem conversion or soil health.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it could report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups, beyond its materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, social inclusion, soil health, and ecosystem conversion, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain, including nutrition.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and to report its progress towards its scope 3 targets. Further, it has an opportunity to improve its performance by aligning its GHG emissions reduction targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
The company could disclose activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to engage with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to provide evidence of how its activities contribute to addressing malnutrition and increasing the availability and variety of nutrient-dense crops.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that all its operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme or another reputable certification widely recognised in the industry. Additionally, the company could disclose the percentage of its food suppliers that are certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Workforce nutrition
The company has an opportunity to disclose evidence of workforce nutrition programmes.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to offer examples of remediation programs when instances of child labour are discovered within its operations. Alongside conducting third-party SEDEX audits, it could explain how it is supporting its suppliers in preventing child labour, including efforts to enhance their capabilities. While the company has expectations in place that prohibit child labour among its suppliers, it could also disclose specific policy requirements which include the implementation of an age verification system.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has set up initiatives to improve the sustainability of the farms but it could demonstrate how it improves farmers’ income resilience through its procurement practices and supply chain relationships. Also, it has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has the opportunity to transform its expectations for suppliers regarding the prohibition of retaining workers’ personal documents, restricting workers’ freedom of movement, and paying recruitment fees into policy requirements. Additionally, it could describe how it supports and strengthens its suppliers’ abilities to prevent forced labour impacts. Currently, the company discloses that it conducts third-party Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX) audits periodically, with a particular focus on human rights issues including forced labour and ethical recruitment. However, it could further provide information on capacity-building efforts for suppliers.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to recognise and assess the health and safety risks to vulnerable groups, such as migrant and temporary labourers, women and young farmers. Furthermore, it could provide evidence of support activities that improve the health and safety of vulnerable groups.

Land rights
The company states that it expects its suppliers to respect land-tenure rights as well as the rights of indigenous and local communities to give or withhold their free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) to operations on lands to which they hold legal or customary rights. However, it could require them to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company could describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. Moreover, the company includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships. However, it does not specify the consequences of breaching these clauses.

The company states that it makes political contributions after approval from its CEO or the Government Relations department. However, the company could further disclose whether such contributions are exceptions and what criteria guide these decisions. Additionally, the company discloses some information regarding its lobbying expenditures but could further clarify if this disclosure covers the company’s global operations.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage, and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. Furthermore, it could disclose how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. Additionally, the company could commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment and disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its workforce.

Respect human rights
The company has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities, covering its own operations. While the company describes its process for assessing its human rights risks, it has an opportunity to disclose what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. Additionally, it could disclose a global system to act upon, prevent, or mitigate its salient human rights issues.