Farmers and Mars go together.
The Farmer Income Lab is an organisation you would not expect within Mars Incorporated, in Mclean, Virginia, USA.
So what exactly will establish this variety of the Fairtrade business?
The aim is to find practical insight and new models for improving income, with the aid of a Livelihoods Fund For Family Farming.
The UN has similar goals for sustainable development, the first of which is to eradicate poverty.
Again, Barry quotes, We will be working with a number of experts to help guide the Farmer Income Lab’s work, and are delighted that Oxfam has agreed to serve as one of the Labs advisers.
We value their deep subject matter expertise across a wide range of poverty and development issues.
Together, we will work to build supply chains where everyone wins.
Obviously, human rights, deforestation, incomes and socio-environmental impact are also high on the list of priorities.
The crops concerned are cocoa, black tea, coffee and even seafood and fish.
Fairtrace online platform empowers producers and nurtures business trust.
It also enables direct collaboration by giving business partners the possibility to work together on reporting and confirming transactions.
Thus “Fairtrace”, which will be serving over 3,500 Fairtrade customers in the future, creates a new level of transparency and assurance in global trade.
“Fairtrace” distinctly advances producers’ positions in their supply chains.
Says Rüdiger Meyer, Flocert’s CEO: “Our mission is to empower producers.
“Fairtrace” enables producers to have an overview on the payments they should receive from their business partners.
This increases producers’ standing in the supply chain and puts them in greater financial control.” With the development of the online platform, Flocert also aims to meet a growing demand of consumers, the general public and governments in regards to product origin and product sourcing.
“Actors in global trade are pushing to know where their products come from and whether they were sourced in a sustainable way,” explains Rüdiger Meyer.
For risk management, they require relevant and timely information about commodities being passed through supply chains and knowledge on the specific actors.
By working with “virtual handshakes” between supply chain partners, i.e. with second party verification, “Fairtrace” creates transparency and trust throughout the whole supply chain, enables direct communication and stronger relations between the business partners.
This post is generously sponsored by ethical.market, an ecommerce site that lists only ethical brands who care about the impact of their supply chain and believe in full transparency.
As always, EcoCult only works with companies we believe are doing good things.
You may presume that since this item was made by hand by an independent artisan or small business, that means it’s made ethically.
However, as ethical.market founder Raquel found, we don’t have the luxury of making that assumption.
There’s an entire life that item has already lived before each of its individual ingredients reach the hands of the artisan to craft the final result.
Back then, Raquel thought that because these brands were making their own products, that meant the items they sold were ethically made.
So, Raquel began to dig into supply chain transparency and hold her sellers accountable to higher expectations.
“In 2015, we brought in some ethical standards that everyone had to follow.
“We knew we couldn’t be all things to all people,” Raquel says, which is why they chose to focus on fair working standards at first.
“I think it’s really important to have everyone involved,” she says.
Scotland’s Oil Skills, Experience In Demand Across Globe.
There was continued strong demand across the globe for Scotland’s oil skills, experience and expertise during 2015/16, Scottish Enterprise’s annual survey of international activity in the oil and gas sector showed.
International activity from Scotland’s oil and gas supply chain accounted for just over half of its total sales during 2015/16, at 50.9 percent.
The sector delivered $14.5 billion (GBP 11.4 billion) of international sales, made up of $5.2 billion (GBP 4.1 billion) of direct exports and $9.3 billion (GBP 7.3 billion) of sales via international subsidiaries.
“As we look to grow Scotland’s oil and gas sector, supporting international activity remains a key focus for us,” Head of Oil and Gas at Scottish Enterprise, David Rennie, said in an organization statement.
Scottish Government Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy, Paul Wheelhouse, said the report shows that the Scottish supply chain is maintaining its strength.
“With up to 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent estimated to remain in the North Sea basin, Scotland’s oil and gas industry has a bright future for decades to come,” Wheelhouse said in a government statement.
According to the survey, the United States, Norway, Netherlands, Australia and Canada were the top five markets for international activity during 2015.
Looking ahead, the United States, Norway and the United Arab Emirates remain the top three countries for growth opportunities in the immediate future and over the next five years.
Why businesses care about sustainability and are hiring people for it, too.
To stay afloat, many businesses are turning to green experts to help craft new ways of putting people and the planet first.
“It’s evolve or perish — that’s where we are now,” says Izabel Loinaz, Program Director at the Center for Sustainable Business Practices at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business.
Industries are increasingly on the hunt for experts with serious business and sustainability chops, Loinaz says.
“We’re a launching pad for future industry leaders to solve the world’s problems, particularly the most pressing social and environmental ones.” The health of a company’s labor force is inextricably linked to its environmental practices.
This April, for example, Apple announced plans to stop using mined minerals and elements completely and to rely on recycled materials to make its products instead.
We’re moving toward a closed-loop supply chain.
One day, we’d like to be able to build new products with just recycled materials, including your old products.” Apple still has some work to do, but its mission is ambitious.
That’s why training the next generation of sustainable business experts and industry leaders is more important than ever.
In the Oregon MBA program at the University of Oregon, students learn to think about business from a business perspective — and a human one.