Olam Food Ingredients (OFI) is ramping up its efforts to improve environmental sustainability in its cashew supply chains. Cashews are some of the most volatile ingredients in F&B supply chains, and OFI is looking to “tackle these challenges head-on.” 

Additionally, the company’s newly launched Cashew Trail offers more production transparency to consumers, as the plant-based movement continues to gather speed.

Speaking to FoodIngredientsFirst, Burcu Turkay, sustainability manager for nuts at OFI says, “Consumers increasingly want to know that if they are making a choice to eat more healthily or reduce their carbon footprint, that the product has ‘all round goodness.’ Food needs to be right for them as a consumer, for the farmer and for the planet.”

OFI’s newly launched Cashew Trail, is giving customers “even more reassurance about the sustainability credentials of our products,” but Turkay says he hopes that it will shine a spotlight on the plight of the cashew farmer and encourage others to join us. 

The Cashew Trail strategy sets 2030 targets across OFI’s cashew business – in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and OFI’s commitment to delivering naturally good, sustainable ingredients. 

These include ambitious goals to fight poverty by increasing average yields by 50 percent and helping 250,000 cashew households to improve their livelihoods. 

Along with economic opportunity, Cashew Trail includes commitments around health, education, diversity and climate. 

“We need cashew to have the same attention as cocoa and coffee in terms of sustainability support.”

To achieve the targets outlined in Cashew Trail, he stresses the importance of maintaining partnerships with its customers, as well as governments, NGOs and development agencies. “We are looking for partners to help scale our efforts and positive impact so we can achieve our vision of a fair and resilient cashew supply chain,” Turkay adds.

“The launch of Cashew Trail, our first set of public targets, will help us go even further and faster to tackle the deep-rooted challenges facing cashew growing and process communities.”

Plant-based potential 
With plant-based products becoming more popular, there is greater opportunity for awareness and impact across the nuts value chain, according to Ashok Krishen, managing director and CEO of the OFI nuts business.

“Cashews aren’t just for trail mixes, but are now used to make vegan butter, milk and cheese.” 

Consumers want to know that when they buy these products, they support a supply chain wher farmers earn more, communities are supported, and the natural world is protected, from the farm right through to OFI customers’ factory gates.

“These new goals, the first of their kind in the sector, will drive positive impact, today and tomorrow,” Krishen outlines. 

“For those customers relying on a variety of nuts in growing end-use categories such as bakery, confectionery and plant-based milk, we will soon be launching our public targets for hazelnuts and almonds,” explains Anantharaman Shekhar, CEO of OFI. 

“We continually reinforce our ability to supply great-tasting ingredients that also create sustainable impact across these supply chains,” he shares. 

Investing in farmers
Cashew farmers are among the poorest in the world, says OFI. Most are smallholders in rural areas across Africa and Asia and cannot always grow enough to feed their families, afford much-needed healthcare or send their children to school. 

By 2030, all children from OFI’s direct supply chain will benefit from investment in education infrastructure, 30 percent of farmers in directly sourced cashew communities will be women and we will halve the Greenhouse Gas emission intensity of OFI cashew supply chains.

OFI, which has directly supported over 50,000 cashew farmers over the last decade, hopes to change this and encourage others in the sector to collaborate for measurable change.

Driving tangible change

This innovation is both practical, like using data to deliver training tailored to individual farmers, and disruptive, like Olam Direct, which reaches farmers further afield, giving them access to the latest market prices. It also offers the ability to negotiate directly rather than through traditional buying agents, thereby retaining more value for their crop. 

Progress on Cashew Trail will be reported annually, tracked and supported by data from over 100 economic, social and environmental metrics on Olam’s sustainability insights platform AtSource.

This includes measuring impacts in OFI’s cashew processing facilities located in both Asia and Africa.

Boosting livelihoods
OFI hopes to boost job creation and reduce emissions through transportation of the raw nut by increasing the processing in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria.

Krishen adds: “We’ve worked with customers and partners for over a decade to make the cashew supply chain fairer, stronger and more sustainable, but cashew farmers are still struggling for survival.”

This is especially true with many reporting even lower incomes and lesser food for their daily survival than before the COVID-19 pandemic, he flags.