This is CESFAC’s 2030 Sustainability Agenda

The Spanish Confederation of Manufacturers of Compound Animal Feed has organized the technical conference “Sustainable supply of raw materials for animal feed” within the International Fair for Animal Production (FIGAN) at the Zaragoza Fair, in which it has announced its objectives for the sustainability of soy supply.

Within this framework, Javier Piquer, deputy deputy director of the General Sub-Directorate of Livestock Production Means of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, has addressed the current situation and proposals on sustainability and deforestation within the framework of the EU.

In addition, by the CESFAC technical department, Verónica Sánchez has presented the document “Sustainable soy for a responsible supply of compound feed” with the sectoral objectives of sustainability in the supply of soy.

Specific cases of corporate sustainability initiatives by Agroveco and Grupo Jorge have also been released. At the table moderated by the president of the Association of Feed Manufacturers of Aragón, Enrique Bascuas, Fernando Valdrés, general director of Agroveco and Luis Ullate, Coordinator of Management Systems of Grupo Jorge participated.

This event was preceded by the participation of the general director of CESFAC, Jorge de Saja, in the 21st AECOC Congress of Meat and Prepared Products, where he participated in a discussion table around the challenge of sustainable sourcing of raw materials. At this event, the CESFAC 2030 Sustainability Agenda and the main sectoral objectives in terms of sustainable soy supply were also announced.

Sustainable soy
The proliferation and tightening of regulations in exporting countries in matters of deforestation, the greatest regulatory requirement in the main markets, such as the European Union, as well as the future requirements that will be marked both at the national level and at the European level by the Pact Green, they pave the way for a paradigm shift towards a new sustainable production model that sooner or later will be the new normal.

Under this premise, the CESFAC Board of Directors approved in November 2019, a strategy called the CESFAC 2030 Sustainability Agenda, which frames a series of strategies and actions aimed at sustainability and which adopted a declaration of intentions for within a reasonable period of time, of 11 years, reach a proactive sector objective regarding soy produced in a sustainable way and originated in non-deforested areas.

As a result of this work, the study Sustainable Soy for a responsible supply of compound feed has been prepared, an analysis of the current situation with respect to the sustainable supply of raw materials, focused on soy as a strategic raw material used by the compound feed industry. in Spain.

The objective of the study has been to analyze the existing information on soy imports from Brazil and Argentina to Spain in order to know their environmental impacts and identify the initiatives that have been implemented to reduce it from different areas. The results of this work, prepared from data collected for the 2016-2018 triennium, evaluating the positive impacts of the main sustainable production initiatives and programs, allow us to identify the volume of imported soybeans to which these good practices refer and to know the progress of companies at source towards the ambitious global goal: reducing deforestation.

In the study, “low-risk deforestation soybeans” have been considered as those that have been produced according to a sustainability program, such as the one developed by the European Federation of Composite Food Manufacturers (FEFAC), which contemplates criteria or policies focused on the fight against deforestation.

Under these premises, the results of the evaluation of the flows of soy imports from Brazil and Argentina to Spain for 2018, showed that there is a high percentage of soy associated with a low risk of deforestation. According to origin, 71% of imported soybeans from Brazil and 91% from Argentina can be considered associated with a low risk of deforestation.

Based on the data collected in the aforementioned study, the challenge of the sector is to progressively increase the volume of imported soybeans associated with a low risk of deforestation according to a calendar, according to the particular starting situation of the country of origin. In this sense, it aims to achieve 100% supply of low-risk deforestation soy in 2030, through intermediate milestones in 2024 (79% in Brazil and 93% for Argentina) and 2027 (91% in Brazil and 95% for Argentina), which will include reviews, evaluation and pertinent actions in those years.