Sugarcane Sourcing

We remain focused on our aim to improve sugarcane sourcing, including by respecting human rights and working toward our environmental goals. When produced and sourced responsibly, we believe sugarcane has the potential to benefit people and nature.

Sugar is a key ingredient for the chocolate and biscuits we produce in our plants around the world. Depending on local availability, we source a combination of beet and cane sugar, which is often grown locally. We buy less than 1% of the global sugarcane supply, and we source from a variety of countries. Based on our sourcing footprint, and the results of our human rights and environmental risk assessments, our sourcing approach prioritizes deploying human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) approaches in Brazil, Mexico, and India.

Recognizing that we cannot achieve the supply chain improvements we seek acting alone, we participate in a number of organizations, with the goal of collaborating to strengthen the tools, resources, and environmental and social standards related to resilient sugarcane production. These include:

  • Bonsucro the leading global sustainability platform and standard for sugarcane. We are part of Bonsucro's Members Council and are actively involved in its Human Rights Task Force
  • AIM-Progress a forum of leading Fast Moving Consumer Goods manufacturers and suppliers working together to help enable responsible sourcing practices and supply chains
  • Coalition for Responsible Sugarcane India (CRSI) a multi-stakeholder initiative promoting responsible practices across India's sugarcane value chain

Through these platforms, we are actively engaging with relevant stakeholders, including civil society, with the goal that human rights and environmental sustainability are top priorities for the sugarcane sector.

Supplier Engagement

We work with our suppliers to help improve our sugarcane supply chain:

  • Contractual requirements we expect our suppliers to adhere to the Mondelēz International Supplier Code of Conduct, Supplier Sustainability Guidelines, Corporate Responsibility Requirements, and our Human Rights Policy.
  • Supplier assessments and capability building in prioritized sourcing countries, we are progressively deploying HREDD approaches adapted to each local context, as part of our engagement with prioritized suppliers. As part of our Supplier Net Zero program, we are evaluating the climate programs of our key sugar suppliers through EcoVadis supporting the education of lower maturity suppliers through climate courses with Supplier Leadership on Climate Transition, and helping enable suppliers to create and share Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) through our partner, HowGood.
  • Collaboration on direct intervention we collaborate with other supply chain actors and civil society through multi-stakeholder initiatives and co-fund farm-level programs to help mitigate systemic risks in priority sourcing countries

On-the-Ground Action in Priority Countries

In addition to our global approach, we are investing in direct, on-the-ground initiatives in our three priority sugarcane sourcing countries. These programs complement our supplier expectations by helping to address systemic risks at both the farm and community level.

India

Through CRSI, we support a project called Creating Pathways for Safe, Orderly and Responsible Migration for Ensuring Social Sustainability in Sugar Supply Chain in Maharashtra, India (COSMOS). This program is implemented by the International Organization for Migration and aims to improve social due diligence for sugarcane farm workers. The project is designed to help address the root causes of human rights risks that may affect migrant workers, help strengthen social safeguards, and implement community-based solutions such as responsible recruitment, grievance mechanisms, and support services, with a focus on benefiting migrant workers and their families.

Brazil

We support an AIM-Progress initiative aiming to strengthen grievance mechanisms for sugarcane smallholders, initially supported by Oxfam. The project has held roundtables to map existing grievance mechanisms in the sugarcane sector and to identify opportunities for improvement. Stakeholders such as rural workers and trade unions were actively involved in the process of developing a set of key recommendations. The project is now focusing on supplier capacity building on HREDD and effective grievance mechanisms and is supported by Proactiva.

Mexico

We have supported capacity building initiatives on HREDD for our direct suppliers across different supply chains, including sugarcane, and we continue to develop our approach to help support direct intervention in this geography.