At the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon (2022), Wholechain and IDH unveiled a program targeting deforestation-free supply chains in Brazil. This presentation invited companies and brands here to join us on the journey to create innovative solutions for sustainable food.
Climate Week NYC 2024
At Climate Week NYC 2024, soy was placed at the intersection of food, fashion, and sustainability, alongside beef and leather:
CJ Selecta and Rever Consulting shared practical insights on preventing deforestation-linked soy from contaminating global supply chains.
WWF emphasized that certification must be matched with interoperable data systems, reinforcing the call for a global framework.
Opportunity For Grains
The opportunity currently present for grains is to build on globally recognized standards to ensure interoperability and credibility across sectors. Examples of foundational standards-based work informing our approach include:
GS1 for universal identifiers and event-based traceability (EPCIS).
UN Transparency Protocol: applies standards similar to GS1’s EPCIS, along with other open standards for data sharing, to a UN context, anchoring governance and accountability for traceability data in global trade and sustainability.
Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST): providing a proven model for applying industry-specific key data elements to GS1 critical tracking events.
Global Traceability Framework for Beef and Leather: providing early evidence of success for applying the methodology of designing GDST from GS1 standards to yet another sector.
This standards-based approach ensures that the grains framework is not tied to any single platform or technology, but instead creates a common data language that multiple industries can adopt, scale, and verify.
Research & Development
Better Food Future is convening a Research & Development Working Group with a coalition of previously engaged and new partners to move toward a Global Traceability Framework for Grains, starting with soy. The initiative will:
Engage aquaculture and aquafeed companies to address soy in feed formulations.
Collaborate with animal protein sectors (poultry, pork, beef, dairy) to align on deforestation-free soy sourcing.
Integrate human consumption and industrial use (e.g., food ingredients, fashion, biofuels) to broaden accountability.
Leverage lessons from seafood (GDST), beef and leather (Global Traceability Framework for Beef and Leather pilots), and early soy prototypes to build a cross-sector coalition for traceability and interoperability.
