Bayer

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company provides evidence that performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies are linked to targets and objectives covering environmental and social issues. It also shows that its highest governance body has expertise in the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade associations but could extend this to include all geographies where it operates. It provides a clear framework for assessing the alignment of its trade associations with its climate policies, yet there is room to develop similar frameworks for other topics like biodiversity and nutrition. The company reports any misalignment between its trade associations’ lobbying activities and its sustainability targets and has an action plan with clear escalation steps to address such misalignment.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the channels and outcomes of its stakeholder engagement, beyond materiality assessment. Moreover, its stakeholder engagement activities cover 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 has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company is actively reducing its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It has set a target to reduce these emissions by 42% by the end of 2029. In addition, the company has reported a 19.5% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions from the base year. It reports year-on-year reductions in relation to these targets. The company’s commitment to addressing climate change is demonstrated by its leadership in aligning these goals with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Furthermore, it has disclosed a target to reduce scope 3 GHG emissions by 12.3% by 2029.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging, for example by introducing refillable packaging for some of its products.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company promotes the concept of regenerative agriculture and offers a special training module within their BayGAP platform to improve soil health and agrobiodiversity in its production practices.

Water withdrawal
The company showcases its commitment to reducing water withdrawal by implementing measures in its own operations. Additionally, it reports the amount of water withdrawn for its own operations specifically in water-stressed areas. Moreover, the company actively collaborates with its suppliers to minimize water withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has launched the Nutrient Gap Initiative, aiming to impact 50 million people annually by 2030. This initiative focuses on expanding access to diverse nutritious food, such as vegetables, fruits, and grains, as well as nutritional supplements. To address the main barriers to accessing micronutrients, the company advocates for affordable nutrients and provides education on vitamins and minerals through its own portfolio.

As part of the initiative, the company discloses it is forming strategic partnerships with NGOs to reach underserved mothers with daily Multiple Micronutrient Supplementation (MMS) intervention. These interventions have already begun across more than 25 countries.
Additionally, the company is committed to the Zero Hunger Pledge and has dedicated 160 million US dollars to help end global hunger by 2030. This investment includes research and development efforts to provide smallholder farmers with quality vegetable seeds. Through Bayer’s Vegetable Seeds business, farmers will receive improved varieties of seeds that are essential to local diets, such as okra and bitter gourd.

Workforce nutrition
The company has implemented workforce nutrition programmes that include nutrition education via an internal facing website called House of Health, breastfeeding support (e.g., breastfeeding rooms), and healthy food offerings (e.g., healthy options in cafeterias based on the recommendations of the German Society for Nutrition).

Child labour
The company has a policy that requires suppliers to prohibit child labor and verify the age of recruited workers. In order to prevent child labor in the seed supply chain, the company has implemented its Child Care Program. This program involves conducting inspections of individual seed producers and providing educational activities.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has a goal to support 100 million smallholder farmers in low and middle income countries by 2030 by improving their access to agricultural products and services. It focuses on digital farming solutions and new innovative business models, engages with farmers’ associations and has a global advisory group for farmers. In addition, it has partnered with various organizations to establish Better Life Farming centers that help smallholder farmers make their farms commercially profitable and sustainable, and offer financing options, market access, and fair prices. Lastly, it reports on the impacts of its initiatives on farmers’ income.

Forced labour
The company prohibits the payment of any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job, and it does not retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement in its supply chain.

Land rights
The company requires its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company reports that it pays its employees at least a living wage that is annually reviewed and specified worldwide by the nonprofit organization Business for Social Responsibility (BSR).

Act ethically
The company has a public commitment to protect personal data and a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption. It also identifies bribery and corruption risks by means of Bayer risk management system. It includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships and has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns about bribery and corruption. The company’s approach to lobbying and political engagement is outlined in a policy statement, where it specifies that it does not make political contributions and requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its policy.

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 in its operation and supply chain. It also discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships.

In addition, it states that it pays all workers a living wage, and describes how this wage is determined. The company also publicly limits working hours, stating that workers shall not exceed 48 hours in a regular week or 60 hours with overtime. It also discloses the proportion of employees covered by collective bargaining agreements.

It breaks down its workforce by employee category and age group, and discloses the proportion of women in each employee category. The company is committed to gender equality and women’s empowerment, with targets to increase the proportion of women in top management, aiming for gender parity at all management levels by 2030. Finally, it reports that 45% of its supervisory board is composed of women.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights, and it describes its processes for identifying human rights risks both in its own operations and supply chain. It also assesses these risks and discloses its salient human rights issues, and provides a case study on how it has acted on a significant human rights risk. Additionally, the company has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers as well as to external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the topics it engages with some of its stakeholders (e.g. associations, investors, rating agencies, NGOs). However, it could disclose the issues raised by other stakeholders such as customers, employees, local communities, and regulators.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has reported an increase in its scope 3 emissions compared to last year. It also has the chance to show progress in meeting these scope 3 targets. Currently, the company discloses that its scope 3 targets are in line with the SBTi’s 2°C trajectory. However, there is room for improvement by aligning the targets with a more ambitious 1.5-degree trajectory.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets that encompass optimizing the use of fertilizers and minimize the use of pesticides as part of its R&D and value chain activities, and report progress against these targets.

Plastic use and packaging waste
While the company describes its activities to reduce plastic use and transition towards sustainable packaging, it has an opportunity to disclose the associated quantitative data.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production practices and report progress against it.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal across its own operations and report progress against the target.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose the outcomes of its nutrition-sensitive activities. This includes providing data that demonstrates how its initiatives are contributing to addressing malnutrition and increasing the availability and variety of nutrient-dense food and crops.

Workforce nutrition
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence on its healthy food offerings program and to expand its nutrition initiatives to its supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company has the opportunity to share examples of remediation programs when cases of child labor are discovered in its operations.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has a policy against paying recruitment fees for its operations, but it should also consider disclosing any restrictions on retaining workers’ personal documents or limiting their freedom of movement. Additionally, the company offers training to suppliers on human rights, but it can improve by explaining how it is helping suppliers prevent forced labour.

Land rights
The company could disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights as set out in the relevant part(s) of the VGGT’s or the IFC Performance Standards.

Living wage
The company defines living wage in its Supplier Code of Conduct Guidance document as a pay that ensures adequate standard of living for all employees but 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.

Act ethically
The company discloses information about its lobbying expenditures but could further specify whether these expenditures cover all locations where it lobbies or only specific countries or regions.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company expects its suppliers to pay a living wage, it has an opportunity to elaborate on how it supports this payment. Additionally, the company could disclose the ratio of basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce, broken down by employee category and significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
While the company has a publicly available policy statement committing it and its suppliers to respect the right not to be subject to discrimination, forced labour, and child labor, and respecting the right to freedom of association, it could strengthen its commitment on collective bargaining by clarifying that the commitment covers all contexts and locations.
Also, it could strengthen the language in its Supplier Code of Conduct that covers the ILO rights, to make it a binding policy commitment.