Louis Dreyfus Company

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.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains. For example, the company promotes its Soy Sustainability Policy among suppliers, emphasising its zero-deforestation and zero-conversion expectations. It has also enhanced internal processes for traceability and land-use monitoring and developed a verification methodology for zero deforestation and conversion.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

No leading practices were identified in the nutrition area.

Child labour
The company collects and maintains relevant employee documentation as required by local regulations during recruitment as a means to verify the age of recruited workers.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has integrated expectations regarding farmers’ income into its Global Code of Conduct for Coffee Suppliers. To facilitate farmers’ market access, it strategically places silos, warehouses, transloading facilities, and ports. Additionally, it outlines initiatives that aim to empower farmers to transition from subsistence farming to small-scale commercial agriculture, which help farmers gain access to larger agricultural value chains and increase their incomes through diversified production. Further, it reports on the impact of some of its projects on farmers’ income.

Act ethically
The company has a publicly available global tax strategy, which is approved by the highest governance body.

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 for its operations and supply chain.

Respect human rights
The company states that it has a human rights grievance mechanism that is accessible to all workers. Additionally, the company emphasises that this mechanism is also available to external stakeholders who may be adversely affected by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives that cover environmental and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Furthermore, it could provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets and 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 materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company states that it has a materiality assessment, it could disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts, including how external stakeholders are involved in the process, how regularly the assessment is undertaken, and the outcome of the process. While it discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Moreover, it reports qualitative progress against all its targets but could further disclose quantitative information regarding its current achievement.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions.

Ecosystem conversion
While the company has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, it could cover all high-risk commodities.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to optimise the use of fertilisers and minimise the use of pesticides in its production and/or sourcing practices, and report on their progress against the targets.

Food loss and waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report progress against them. Also, it has an opportunity to align its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3 (50% reduction by 2030).

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

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and activities to address malnutrition and food insecurity.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that 100% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme or other widely recognised (industry-specific) certification. Additionally, the company can reveal the percentage of food suppliers that are certified to a GFSI-recognized 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 disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

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 discloses a prohibition to keep workers’ personal documents for its operations and supply chain. It also requires its coffee suppliers not to burden jobseekers and workers by collecting recruitment fees or related costs, but it could extend this expectation to all suppliers and its operations. Furthermore, the company also has an opportunity to highlight its efforts in supporting suppliers to prevent forced labour.

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 has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to disclose a public policy statement prohibiting bribery and corruption and to describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts. It could also include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships. While the company has a mechanism for stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns, it is unclear if this mechanism is accessible to all stakeholders and if complainants have the option to identify themselves or remain anonymous.

Furthermore, the company could disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document and specify that it does not make political contributions and to divulge its lobbying expenditures.  Additionally, the company could disclose that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. Furthermore, the company could 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. The company could also disclose how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers.

While the company has a statement on gender equality and women’s empowerment, it has an opportunity to translate the latter in a public policy document and disclose related time-bound targets. The company has an opportunity to disclose that it has at least 30% women on the board and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy statement committing it to respect human rights. Furthermore, while it has a policy statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights, it could reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain. Additionally, the company could describe a comprehensive process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities, including its suppliers.

Furthermore, it states that it has conducted country-level assessments on key environmental and social issues in oil palm production, and ran supplier NDPE risk assessments. However, it has an opportunity to describe its process for assessing its human rights risks and disclose the results of its human rights risk assessment and what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. The company could disclose a global system to act on, prevent or mitigate its salient human rights issues.