IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative on 5 April 2022 launched the SourceUp platform for the coffee and spices sectors in India, Indonesia and Vietnam. International companies including Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE), Nestlé, Tchibo, Lavazza Foundatio, Unilever, ECOM, OLAM, LDC, Simexco, Sucden, Tata Coffee, Nedspices, Jayanthi Spices, Synthite Spices; domestic company Intimex Group, local authorities from India, Indonesia and Vietnam, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Werner Gruber, the Head of Swiss Cooperation Office in Vietnam have joined the launch.
Accounting for 60% of the Earth’s population but 74% of the total number of farmers, Asia is a critical food and agriculture production hub that is mostly disconnected and at a small scale. Since 2016, IDH has collaborated with companies and local governments on landscape approaches and sustainability in the coffee and spices sectors.
To date, in Vietnam and India, this approach reduced water use by 15%, chemical fertilizer use by 15%, improved income by up to 20% and lowered production costs. In 2021, JDE became the first company to use SourceUp to make a coffee sourcing commitment.
SourceUp connects markets with producing areas for responsible sourcing at scale. Through sharing relevant and accurate data, it increases transparency, helping companies make sourcing decisions that will fulfil sustainability commitments and raise the bar of sustainability at the landscape level. SourceUp was launched for the global market in the Netherlands on 15 December 2021. Later this year, the platform will be made available for the palm oil sector, with June 2022 as the tentative date.
With initial impacts created in Asia landscapes over the last 5 years, we are now moving to the new phase of landscape development in which scaling and business transformation should not be at commune level but to the district and sector levels. SourceUp has been proved as an innovative approach and will be applied continuously in the coming time. It will also be mainstreamed in the national and corporate policies to achieve impacts at scale.
SourceUp helps companies work with local producers, governments and civil society in a structured way and demonstrate the impact and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and a Forest Positive future. The structured collaboration that SourceUp proposes can help companies to address human risks issues in an inclusive and efficient manner.
However, those achievements are far from sufficient for driving sustainable production and responsible sourcing at scaling. Therefore, the launch today is to discuss with public-private partners the future of SourceUp, define concrete joint-actions to further promote SourceUp, and make it an environmental and business case for sustainable sourcing (Christopher Brett, Lead Agribusiness Specialist, World Bank).
You can watch the launch session below.
You can also check our FAQ, in which we answer the most common questions related to SourceUp.