Bunge’s satellite program to monitor soybean crops in Brazilian Cerrado

04 Mar 2021 --- Bunge is launching an initiative to monitor soybean crops in the Brazilian Cerrado, one of the high-risk areas of deforestation in Brazil. The program will help partners implement supply chain verification systems, including satellite and farm-scale images.

Dealers can use independent imaging services or use Bunge’s geospatial monitoring structure at no cost.

Dubbed Bunge Sustainable Partnership, the initiative is part of Bunge’s global non-deforestation policy to reach deforestation-free value chains worldwide by 2025.

Traceability and monitoring
Bunge will be the first global company to foster mass action in the Cerrado region to track indirect purchases of soybeans. This offers extensive benefits to the entire supply chain.

The company expects to reach 100 percent monitoring of its indirect soybeans purchases by 2025, aligned with its global commitment to deforestation-free supply chains.

Bunge says it already has 100 percent traceability to the farm for its direct purchases and the Brazilian Cerrado region alone.

The company monitors more than 8,000 farms, reaching 11.6 million hectares (28.6 million acres), which accounts for 96 percent of the soybeans purchased directly in this region. 

Bunge expects to reach 100 percent monitoring of its indirect soybeans purchases by 2025.

Tracking indirect purchases 
With the engagement of grain dealers through the Bunge Sustainable Partnership, the company expects to reach 100 percent of traceability and monitor its indirect purchases in the next four years.

Bunge currently traces and monitors approximately 30 percent of its indirect purchases.

“We recognize the important role we can play in our industry. This unprecedented initiative is a way for Bunge to share with its supply chain the best practices we use to build value chains that are traceable and verifiable. We value our partnership with dealers and producers to make our supply chains increasingly productive and sustainable, and we believe that solutions at-scale and with long-term impacts are only possible when all partners in the value chain, from farmers to customers, are involved and engaged,” says Rob Coviello, Bunge’s chief sustainability officer and government affairs.

The company will share its experience, methodologies, and tools with partner dealers interested in implementing or improving their suppliers’ social and environmental evaluation (farmers). 

The pilot program is being carried out in partnership with Agrícola Alvorada. Data from the properties the dealer buys soybeans from have already been included in Bunge’s satellite monitoring cycle this year.

“Bunge’s support and expertise in monitoring and tracking are critical to the overall improvement of our supply chain. It accelerated our adaptation to market demands,” says Jarbas Weis, managing director of Agrícola Alvorada.

Farm-scale monitoring
Bunge says it is the only company in the sector that uses data from Brazil’s Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) at this scale to obtain accurate information about the dimensions of the properties and their borders in Brazil. 

This enables the observation of land-use changes more accurately on each of the monitored properties, otherwise impossible with limited GPS coordinates. This new offering would allow grain dealers to use the same model to monitor their suppliers.

Under its global non-deforestation commitment, Bunge also takes several actions to encourage sustainable agriculture, from special financing lines to mapping areas already open and suitable for soybean expansion. 

The most recent example is the AgroApp Bunge, an app that works as a hub of information and tools to support sustainable production, address sustainability-related issues, and offer farmers overall support. 

Through this communication channel, farmers have easy access via mobile devices to CAR data on their properties, contributing to the property’s overall environmental and biodiversity management.

Edited by Gaynor Selby