Syngenta Group

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses some of its trade associations. However, it has an opportunity to provide a full list for all geographies where it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the channels it uses to engage with each stakeholder group. Furthermore, the company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, nutrition, and social issues.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company discloses quantitative evidence on optimising the use of fertilisers in its production practices, as evidenced by a reduction of 4.07% in the total fertilizer use.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

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

Water withdrawal
The company provides reports on the amount of water it withdraws for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Additionally, the company actively collaborates with suppliers to minimize water withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company states that it supports the development of healthy, nutritious foods with its innovation pipeline of seeds, In line with this, it discloses examples of vegetable varieties (e.g. YOOM tomato) with enhanced nutritional quality.

Workforce nutrition
The company has implemented a nutrition education programme via webinars and toolkits to its employees. Furthermore, it provides breastfeeding rooms for nursing mothers.

Child labour
The company verifies the age of workers recruited in its own operations.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company outlines its Good Growth Plan and Principles for Sustainable and Responsible Agriculture, illustrating how it facilitates smallholder farmers’ access to its innovations and solutions. For instance, the company produces smaller and more cost-effective product packs and offers guidance on utilizing new technologies. Additionally, it collaborates with partners to enhance smallholder farmers’ access to financial resources and commercial markets, assisting them in modernizing their farms. Furthermore, the company provides reports on the impacts of its Seeds2B initiative.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company recognizes that farm workers are particularly susceptible to health and safety risks, predominantly because of their exposure to chemicals.

Act ethically
The company discloses a global tax strategy and has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption. It also includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships.  The company has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

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 expects its business relationships to commit as well. Furthermore, it also discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. Also, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and discloses a target to bring all business units and areas down to below 5% raw pay gap by 2024.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and the ILO core labour rights at work in its operations and supply chain. It provides a case study using its Syngenta Fair Labor Program (FLP) that aims to ensure fair labour standards throughout its seed supply farm network, including an Internal Monitoring System as a result of assessment. Also, it describes a joint programme Wage Improvements in Seed Hybrids (WISH) with Syngenta, BASF and an NGO Arisa to improve labor standards, in particular with regards to child labor issues and minimum wage compliance in the vegetable seeds sector in India. Furthermore, the company engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. Also, it 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
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to sustainability performance but can further link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. While stating that the board of directors has the expertise in nutrition, there is an opportunity for the company to disclose whether its highest governance body has specific expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including climate, water, soil health, social inclusion, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

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 can 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 during its stakeholder engagement activities.

Sustainable development strategy
The company has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts. Furthermore, it could disclose group wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While it has an intensity-based target to reduce scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 68% per value added by 2030 from the base year of 2016, it could set absolute targets that are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, it can consider tracking its progress against its reduction targets across all of its operations, and not just for its subsidiaries.

Fertiliser and pesticide use
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets that encompass optimizing the use of fertilizers and 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 commitments 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 the chance to provide quantitative evidence of water withdrawal reduction in its own operations. Although the company already discloses reduction targets for water consumption, absolute water use, and water intensity, it has the opportunity to also disclose a target for reducing water withdrawal across its own operations, and to report progress made towards achieving it.

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 offers healthy meals and snacks at work. However, it has an opportunity to provide more information on how it defines these healthy offerings and ensures accessibility for its employees. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to expand its nutrition initiatives to its supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place. Moroever, t monitors its suppliers on child labour by means of the Syngenta Fair Labor Program (FLP). However, it could indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts.

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
While the company does not allow suppliers to retain workers’ personal documents and restrict workers’ freedom of movement, it has an opportunity to disclose similar firm commitments for its operations. Moreover, it has the opportunity to disclose a prohibition to pay recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job for its value chain. Although it monitors its farm network on forced labour by means of the Syngenta Fair Labor Program, it could indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

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. Furthermore, it could disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document. Additionally, the company also has an opportunity to specify that it does not make political contributions and to divulge its lobbying expenditures.

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 percentage of women on the board is 16.67% and it thus has the opportunity to improve gender equality and diversity in its operation. It also has the opportunity to disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, by significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company also has the opportunity to describe a comprehensive process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities and supply chain, as well as assessing and identifying what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. The latter could include a description of how relevant factors, such as geographical, economic and social, are taken into account. Furthermore, it could also reveal a global system to address its salient human rights issues by preventing, mitigating or remediating them.