Commodities

Sugar

One of the core commodities we work with at Proforest is sugar, supporting mills, refiners and brands like Nestlé, PepsiCo, Kellogg, General Mills, Barry Callebaut and Mars to implement their responsible sourcing commitments.

At production level, we work with mills to drive responsible practices in their own operations and their wider supply base. We also support collaboration involving multiple companies and mills to jointly address issues in a supply base, landscape or sector. 

Labour rights is a core focus area for our work on sugar, as sugar cane cultivation often involves smallholders, manual labour, and a seasonal and migrant labour force, which leads to increased risk of human rights issues.

We help tackle this by capacity building on human rights, labour, and health and safety issues, like Chronic Kidney Disease (CKDu), the safe handling of pesticides and HCV identification and management. We also work directly with mills to develop and implement policies on human rights, worker housing, hydration and recruitment. 

Regenerative agriculture is another key focus area, to ensure cane sugar is produced in an environmentally friendly manner, in terms of reducing emissions and improving carbon capture. 

We also support companies to implement programmes to improve soil health in their supply base, restore landscapes through reforestation, conserve water resources and improve smallholder livelihoods. 

Palm oil

We work with more than 50 companies such as AAK, Cargill, PepsiCo and Musim Mas, helping retailers, manufacturers, traders and refiners to understand their responsible sourcing commitments and implement them throughout their supply chain. We also work directly with palm growers to improve production practices and help them to put environmental and social best practices into action. 

Collaboration is essential to achieve impact at scale. That’s why we support a range of multi-stakeholder initiatives, including a longstanding support to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Together, we are accelerating improved practice within the palm oil sector by advancing thinking around shared responsibility; ensuring that the RSPO Principles and Criteria remain relevant and best-in-class whilst independent smallholders are supported in their sustainability efforts; and continuously improving assurance systems. 

We coordinate the TFA Africa Palm Oil Initiative, which brings together governments, companies, civil society and community groups to develop a sustainable palm oil sector in Africa. We are also facilitating the Palm Oil Collaboration Group (POCG) and its various working groups: Implementation Reporting Framework Active Working Group (IRF AWG), Production and Protection Beyond Concessions (PPBC), Social Issues Working Group (SIWG) and Independent Verification Working Group (IV WG). We also support the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)'s Forest Positive Coalition to develop and implement their palm oil commitments and roadmap. 

Coconut

Coconut is a smallholder dominated crop. Smallholders often have low productivity due to a range of factors: ageing crops; changing coconut market prices; high transportation costs; and a lack of knowledge, organisation and infrastructure support. Global demand for coconut products is growing, but there is a lack of investment to support smallholder needs.  

New investments in sustainable coconut production are needed, to allow smallholders to increase their understanding of new opportunities, as well as the social and environmental risks in the industry.  

At present, the coconut industry lacks common guidelines to shape and assure sustainable supply chains. However, there is an emerging interest in responsible sourcing and growing collaboration between supply chain actors, thanks to the Sustainable Coconut Charter. 

Proforest supports coordinated multi-stakeholder efforts to drive sustainability in the coconut sector. We work on supply chain assessment, and engage on issues around responsible production, bringing our experience from other commodity supply chains in terms of responsible sourcing from smallholders. 

Timber

While the majority of our work addresses forest-risk commodities, such as cocoa and palm oil, we also work on forest management, timber legality and forest product supply chains. We support sustainable practices by providing stepwise guidance on responsible forest management to production companies, with the aim of helping them gain certification for schemes like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which enables them to trade with global sustainable markets.  

When it comes to timber, legality is core to our work, which often focuses on two international legal instruments: the EU FLEGT Action Plan and the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). We advise importers on EUTR and other legal requirements, whilst in producer countries, we help governments and others to establish credible legality assurance systems for FLEGT, EUTR and more. We also provide timber legality verification training for NGOs.