St. Louis, MO February 7, 2023 – Bunge today announced it has achieved 80% traceability and monitoring of soybeans from its indirect supply chain in the Brazilian Cerrado. The pioneering, large-scale initiative to track indirect purchases in the biome is part of the Bunge’s Sustainable Partnership Program and underscores the company's consistent performance in the development of sustainable and responsible supply chains, particularly in areas at higher risk of deforestation in Brazil.
Launched in 2021, Bunge’s Sustainable Partnership Program was designed to help grain resellers assess suppliers’ social-environmental performance. Through the program, Bunge shares its experience, methodologies and tools with grain resellers to enable them to bring to market commodities of proven sustainable origin. The program offers access to verification systems, such as satellite and farm-scale images to advance the traceability and monitoring of farms.
"The program reaffirms Bunge's active role in engaging and positively influencing the entire supply chain in Brazil and remains an important instrument in helping the company achieve its goal of deforestation-free chains in 2025," says Pamela Moreira, Bunge's Sustainability Senior Manager for South America. “Since 2018, Bunge has been able to fully trace back to third-party elevators, so the next step was to expand our focus to soybeans acquired through our indirect supply chain in the Brazilian Cerrado. The strategy has led to positive results and strong adoption among grain resellers.”
To further strengthen the program, Bunge is enhancing its partnership with Vega Monitoramento, an agtech company which uses LYRA platform for remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and structured data to perform the socio-environmental diagnosis of agricultural properties.
Developed by Vega Monitoramento and certified by Bureau Veritas – a leader in testing, inspection and certification (TIC) – the LYRA platform is available through an exclusive web interface developed with Bunge. Resellers and cooperatives can access the tool directly without involvement from Bunge and with security endorsed by ISO 27001 certification, an international standard that meets a series of requirements, processes and controls aimed at managing information security.
“Investing in digital solutions is part of Bunge's strategy to expand the scale of its initiatives and positively impact the agribusiness sector," commented Braian Souto, Senior Manager of Global Digital Office at Bunge. “We have a culture of continuous improvement and believe in collaboration, sharing practices, technology and information with our value chains to act faster, simpler and more efficiently.”
Resellers and cooperatives participating in the program get full support from Bunge's business team, in addition to complete technical support from Vega, which offers training for the implementation of the system as well as unlimited free access to the Sustainable Partnership program platform. Companies interested in being part of the Sustainable Partnership should access the program page on Bunge's website.
About Bunge
At Bunge (NYSE: BG), our purpose is to connect farmers to consumers to deliver essential food, feed and fuel to the world. With more than two centuries of experience, unmatched global scale and deeply rooted relationships, we work to put quality food on the table, increase sustainability where we operate, strengthen global food security, and help communities prosper. As the world’s leader in oilseed processing and a leading producer and supplier of specialty plant-based oils and fats, we value our partnerships with farmers to bring quality products from where they’re grown to where they’re consumed. At the same time, we collaborate with our customers to develop tailored and innovative solutions to meet evolving dietary needs and trends in every part of the world. Our Company is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, and we have almost 23,000 dedicated employees working across approximately 300 facilities located in more than 40 countries.
Vega Monitoring
Agtech belongs to Grupo Imagem, which has more than 35 years of pioneering and leadership in the IT and Geotechnology segment. In addition to the most powerful agro-environmental platform available on the market, LYRA, Vega's customized solutions add value to key business processes, such as agricultural monitoring, traceability of origin, socio-environmental compliance, territorial intelligence, and management of environmental assets. Vega annually monitors more than 48 million hectares and has carried out more than 5.5 million socio-environmental compliance analyzes for the business segments it serves, including: trading companies, agrochemicals, insurance companies, banks, resellers, cooperatives, industry, and retail.
Website Information
We routinely post important information for investors on our website, www.bunge.com, in the "Investors" section. We may use this website as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Accordingly, investors should monitor the Investors section of our website, in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings, public conference calls, presentations and webcasts. The information contained on, or that may be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this document.
Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This Bunge press release contains both historical and forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements are not based on historical facts, but rather reflect our current expectations and projections about our future results, performance, prospects and opportunities. We have tried to identify these forward-looking statements by using words including “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “plan,” “intend,” “estimate,” “continue” and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results, performance, prospects or opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. The following important factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements: the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and other potential pandemic outbreaks; the effect of weather conditions and the impact of crop and animal disease on our business; the impact of global and regional economic, agricultural, financial and commodities market, political, social and health conditions; changes in governmental policies and laws affecting our business, including agricultural and trade policies, financial markets regulation and environmental, tax and biofuels regulation; the impact of seasonality; the impact of government policies and regulations; the outcome of pending regulatory and legal proceedings; our ability to complete, integrate and benefit from acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures and strategic alliances; the impact of industry conditions, including fluctuations in supply, demand and prices for agricultural commodities and other raw materials and products that we sell and use in our business, fluctuations in energy and freight costs and competitive developments in our industries; the effectiveness of our capital allocation plans, funding needs and financing sources; the effectiveness of our risk management strategies; operational risks, including industrial accidents, natural disasters and cybersecurity incidents; changes in foreign exchange policy or rates; the impact of our dependence on third parties; our ability to attract and retain executive management and key personnel; other factors affecting our business generally; and the risks and uncertainties described in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section and under the heading “Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements” in our most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K. The forward-looking statements included in this release are made only as of the date of this release, and except as otherwise required by federal securities law, we do not have any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.