Mission Statement

The sustainable agriculture initiative seeks to ensure that the agricultural systems on which Unilever relies have the capacity to deliver sustainable and secure supplies of raw materials and that all of Unilever’s business operations understand and anticipate the changes needed to secure sustainable supplies into the future.

Background

Our mission is to add vitality to life. We meet everyday needs for hygiene, nutrition and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life.

Agriculture provides more than two-thirds of the raw materials for these branded products. Sustainable supply of these materials is an essential element in the long term success of our business.

The capacity of agricultural systems to meet the world’s food and fibre needs is under increasing pressure. Growing competition from urban development and nature conservation is limiting land available for agricultural production while valuable arable land is also being lost due to soil erosion. Agriculture is using more and more water for irrigation yet critical reserves of fresh water are being rapidly depleted. Water resources are also at increasing risk of pollution from nutrients (fertilisers and animal waste) and pesticides used in agricultural production. These factors led Unilever to develop an initiative on Sustainable Agriculture.

Approach

Unilever supports the view that sustainable development is the interaction between economic growth, environmental protection and social progress and has adopted the following definition of Sustainable Agriculture:

Sustainable Agriculture is productive, competitive and efficient while, at the same time, protecting and improving the natural environment and livelihoods of local communities.

Starting from a number of principles which embrace the concepts of economic growth, environmental protection and social progress, we have set up a number of Lead Agriculture Programmes around a number of key crops. Together with stakeholders, these LAPs have worked towards defining new sets of Sustainable Agricultural Practices which lead to improvements on a number of chosen sustainability indicators. We will continue to seek improvements in agricultural practices, leading to ever better sustainability levels in our supply chains.

At the same time, we will support and stimulate general agreement on application of superior agricultural practices through partnerships in our supply chains. This will be best realised in a well-functioning market environment for all inputs and outputs. We will participate in, or start anew, food industry and other initiatives to promote and advance sustainable agriculture for all crops. In this way we will ensure that we deliver against our purpose: to add continuously to the quality of life of our consumers.

Rotterdam, March 2004