Sustainability

Trading in agricultural commodities is a fascinating business, yet one that entails big responsibility. Agricultural commodities are associated with serious socioeconomic and environmental challenges, such as poverty, gender inequality, violation of human rights, deforestation, climate change and more. As the trading arm of the Tropical General Investments Group, we are committed to sustainable and responsible sourcing, manufacturing, and trading of our products. Our purpose is to secure the supply of quality commodities to our customers around the world, while reassuring them about the positive difference we make in farmers’ livelihoods and the natural environment.
Whereas some of those challenges are common across agricultural commodities, some are commodity specific. Our dedicated sustainability teams assess the evolving issues facing the commodities we trade and develop and apply targeted interventions on the ground to effectively address them. We are very aware that achieving “sustainable sectors” is a long-term vision that requires commitment and ongoing effort. Therefore, we focus on continuous improvement by advancing and expanding our sustainability programs and learning from experience and industry best practices. Our sustainability programs and targets are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) so we play our part in the achievement of the Goals.
The agricultural supply chains are dynamic network of numerous stakeholders. To achieve our desired impacts for the farmers and a long-term supply of quality ingredients, we work closely with all actors involved in the supply chains: With farmers and farmer leaders we source from, community/ society members, implementing partners of our programs (e.g. NGOs), policymakers in the countries where we source and operate, donors, and customers (traders, processors and makers of consumer goods).

Sustainable Cocoa Beans

Cocoa farming is a smallholders’ business – approximately 6 million farmers are producing approximately 5 million tons of cocoa per year, globally. Most of the world’s cocoa is grown in West-Africa. In Ghana approximately 600,000 – 800,000 smallholder farmers are engaged in the production of an average 850,000 tons of cocoa beans per year. Our group companies in Ghana (Fludor Ghana Limited) and Nigeria (WACOT Limited) following stringent quality control norms and export the same to different customers around the world. In addition to our mainstream operations, we source cocoa verified sustainable against the Rainforest Alliance certification standard.

We have well established sustainability programs on the ground aiming to improving the living standards of cocoa farming households, building capacity for the communities, and protecting and regenerating the natural resources.

Our cocoa sustainability programs aim to bring impact in the following areas:

⦁ Improvement of farmer livelihoods by promoting sustainable farming practices, building farmers’ entrepreneurial abilities, diversifying income streams and more.
⦁ Strengthening of the local communities by building capacities, empowering women and young people and safeguarding human rights, with the elimination of worst forms of child labour a top priority.
⦁ Preservation and restoration of natural landscapes and of the biodiversity.
⦁ Delivery of maximum supply chain transparency, by investing in traceability, so we build trust in our cocoa
⦁ Securing and increasing the supply of sustainable cocoa.
⦁ Enhancement of the quality of cocoa produced, for example through the provision of high yielding seedlings.
⦁ Improvement of cost efficiency in sustainable cocoa trade.

Impressions from cocoa sustainability projects

Customer Partnerships

Our customer partnerships are catalysts for our efforts to contribute to a more sustainable cocoa sector. We constantly enhance the specifications of our sustainably sourced cocoa and our M&E and reporting capabilities, so we meet our customers growing expectations of as well as evolving legal requirements, such as the new EU Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Directive.
Partnering with us, our customers can adjust their involvement in sustainability through the purchase of sustainable cocoa and investment in selected projects implemented in our cocoa supply chains in Ghana and Nigeria. In turn, we offer them detailed reports providing visibility in the origination and journey of their cocoa as well as progress and impacts made for farmer and cocoa growing communities thanks to their contributions.

Sustainable Sesame Seeds

Sesame remains an important crop, particularly to the Nigerian agricultural sector, and broadly, to Nigeria’s non-oil sector. Nigeria stands among the top global producers and exporters of sesame, and currently has a record of the 7th largest producer of sesame worldwide. In keeping to our sustainability commitments, for decades, we’ve been working with smallholder farmers, implementing sustainability programs at origin locations across this region. It aims to provide solutions to farmers’ most challenging problems- input financing and crop yields.
We continue to develop the sesame commodity through its Out-grower operations in Jigawa state Nigeria. Till 2021, over 7,000 sesame farmers have been mobilised and formed into cooperatives, with 1-billion-naira worth of inputs (fertilisers, agrochemicals and seeds) provided as input financing to sesame farmers.
With ‘Yield Enhancement’ as a key sustainability pillar, our efforts are made to meet or exceed estimated yield of all sesame farms enrolled on the program. Demonstration farms are established for the dissemination of best farming practices and experienced Agronomists and Extension agents deployed to provide farm advisory services. Farmers’ and trainers’ capacity get continually built as they are transformed through improved skills, knowledge and resource transfer.
The interventions are yielding results for farmers as livelihoods continue to exponentially improve across farming communities, while we continue to offtake quality sesame at market rates during harvest.
One of the demonstrations of this commitment to the sustainable development of Nigeria’s agricultural sector, beyond our robust sesame outgrowers program, is the investment in a certified organic sesame farm operation Gumel, Jigawa State.
Our group company Wacot has received the broadest scope of certifications that allow all levels of handling (farming, processing/cleaning and export) as well as the highest category which allows buyers use the term “100% organic” on all products made with its raw sesame: EOS and NOP organic certifications by ECOCERT.
This organic program has strengthened our relationship with the local communities and their leadership structures, it has also boosted our community engagements. The organic sesame project engaged not less than 500 local community indigenes (30% women) implementing critical parts of the project and contributing to preserving the soil fertility and implementing crop rotation, which prevents the increase of pests and the reduction of certain soil nutrients.

Impressions from sesame sustainability projects

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