Agriculture company Syngenta, a member of The Sustainability Consortium, has harmonized its Sustainable Outcomes in Agriculture standard with TSC’s THESIS tool — also known as The Sustainability Insight System. The move will enable a turn-key sustainability solution designed specifically for growers, according to a news release.
Syngenta’s SOA standard is a framework for continuous improvement, enabled through an easy-to-use mobile application called Cropwise Sustainability. In short, it allows growers or supply chain companies to track and communicate their progress in adopting regenerative practices.
“We developed the SOA standard and Cropwise Sustainability application to simplify sustainability across the agricultural supply chain,” Liz Hunt, Syngenta’s head of sustainable and responsible business, said in the release. “TSC has always been an important collaborator in helping us achieve that goal. Benchmarking our standard to THESIS is yet another example of our shared commitment to making sustainable progress, not just manageable, but easy for those feeding the world.”
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In 2023, Syngenta benchmarked the SOA standard to TSC’s THESIS. The benchmarking was executed by a performance assessment system that guides retailers and suppliers in assessing, quantifying, and taking action on critical sustainability issues within their consumer product supply chains. According to the release, the benchmarking allowed Syngenta to:
Enable THESIS users reporting against TSC’s key performance indicators in produce, grains and other crops to use SOA’s relevant criteria and indicator practices.
Provide a simple, efficient and actionable approach to sustainability reporting through the Cropwise Sustainability application.
Allow for a streamlined process in tracking performance in six sustainable outcomes: crop production, water impact, soil health, biodiversity and habitat, human and animal well-being, and community leadership.
By incorporating Syngenta’s SOA standard in the THESIS platform, TSC continues to lead collaboration toward consistent reporting in sustainability, the release said. The new alignment includes benchmarking for grain, animal feed, potato, sweet potato, soy, sweet corn, tomato, pepper, watermelon, snap beans and eggplant suppliers, according to the release.
This standard update and harmonization empower TSC and Syngenta to support growers and supply chain stakeholders in measuring their progress in a credible and scalable way and to offer additional product categories in the future, according to the release.
“As a long-time member of TSC, we are thrilled to see Syngenta’s commitment to align with our THESIS assessment program to help growers commit to and better track their sustainability practices. We are proud to be one of many important organizations that Syngenta is working with to help suppliers take action on their supply chains,” Christy Slay, TSC CEO and vice president of science and impact, said in the release.
