The Chilean Fresh Fruit Industry initiative for sustainability Presentation prepared for GLOBALG.A.P TC Meeting-Crops 26th June 2013 Ricardo Adonis P ASOEX

Nowadays several of the main retailers have begun to talk with their suppliers about sustainability. A lot of activities related with sustainability are being held (seminars, summits, publications, programs in the web etc) but (mostly) not specific for the agriculture. Consequently, at grower’s level, the doubt arouses: Will these demands replace GAP’s ?, Will these demands be mandatory from the retailers? Will these demands need a certification with more and more costs? But the main points: – A) What topics are covered under sustainability? – B) How they should be implemented? – C) How they will be evaluated? … have not had clear answers.

The Chilean Fresh Fruit Industry through ASOEX developed a Project to identify and harmonize Good practices on sustainability and how to implement and measure them, that met the requirements that the retailers are considered to request in the future

A)What topics are covered under sustainability? The Chilean Fresh Fruit Industry model for sustainability

A)What topics are covered under sustainability? Food Safety: Is well covered by the current certification schemes The hot topics are Social and Environment. Social: – Topics covered by BSCI Code of conduct issued by Foreign Trade Association, Brussels. – Topics covered by the ETI Code ( Ethical Trading Initiative). Base for the reports to SEDEX (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange, UK) Environment: Natural resources: Emphasize the reduction in Water consumption, Soil care and in fertilizers (optimize their use) Greenhouse gas emissions : Currently no certifications will be asked. The relevant fact is that growers should know the source of their main emissions and work to reduce them.

– B) How they should be implemented? To use the technically best practices to reduce the impacts in every one of the topics covered. The idea is reduction of the impacts For to establish advances, the comparison of data every year is key

C) How they will be evaluated? Retailers are in the initial steps regarding sustainability for the fresh produce sector. Different with G.A.Ps, sustainability requires a flexible approach. By ex. The emphasis in social aspects can be more relevant in certain areas while in others, the emphasis is needed in water consumption. Even the emphasis can be different for every grower. The measurement of compliance on sustainability is done through “scorecards”, because that tool gives a better “reading” about the degree of compliance with every topic and makes possible to establish improvements. Generally speaking nobody is talking about certification on sustainability: the trend is to measure the baseline and then ask for improvement every year.

The Chilean Fresh Fruit industry has: Developed a set of tools that allows Chilean growers to implement the sustainability requirements that are relevant for the market. Identified Common point between G.A.P and sustainabilty as a means to avoid duplication of efforts and facilitate the implementation. Developed a scorecard for growers to auto-evaluate their current status and evolution through time. This set of tools is one of the first in the sector and allows to Chilean growers a better response for the requirements in sustainability