Climate change & sustainability

Whether you are keen on decreasing your carbon footprint along the supply chain or need to anticipate changes in the climate in order to secure agricultural supplies, Wageningen University & Research can support you in tackling these complex and urgent topics. We help companies that are effectively working on improving sustainability in their organisation and supply chain to gain a competitive advantage in meeting the demands of customers, consumers, NGOs and governments.

Reducing emissions and adapting your agricultural supply chain to climate change in five proven steps.

Our sustainability management cycle is comprised of five steps that bring you closer to your ultimate sustainability goals. By laying out a customised, concrete and feasible strategy and intervention plan, by monitoring and implementing incentives and by evaluating the outcomes, we can give you recommendations for your future activities. You can also hire our expertise for separate steps.

Making farm systems more resilient as a business opportunity

At the same time, these new circumstances provide a variety of business opportunities. For example, changing farm conditions require new seed, crop protection and fertilizer products to make farm systems more resilient.

Reducing your carbon footprint in the Agri & Food chain

Our team consists of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) experts and sector specialists who can draft a baseline carbon footprint to highlight the hotspots in the value chain of farm inputs, crops, ingredients and consumer products. This provides a solid base on which to develop a focused carbon strategy.

We are able to build an intervention plan tailored to sector, region, supply chain and climate specific conditions. This will be tested ex ante for effectiveness weighing up financial cost benefits of GHG mitigation strategies, the level of stakeholder cooperation required, expected farm support and impact.

Adapting your agricultural supply chain to climate change

Less stability in weather conditions (increased intensity of droughts, rainfalls) affects the productivity levels of crop production. How do you cope with these and how do you set-up effective partnerships in the supply chain to secure agricultural supplies?

We employ mapping tools such as Global Detector and Water Risk scans to examine changes in farm production and improvement options. Building on these, we can develop an effective intervention plan to improve vulnerable links in your supply chain.

Our sustainability management cycle

Infographic sustainability management cycle

It is also possible to hire our expertise for separate steps.