Moving towards a sustainable soybean supply chain: a sustainable policy toolbox for Brazilian stakeholders and other global actors

This paper takes stock of over two years of research led by different partners of the UKRI GCRF Trade, Development and the Environment Hub and explores different policies and instruments that have the potential to increase the level of sustainability of the soybean supply chain in Brazil – the world’s largest producer and exporter of this crop – and elsewhere in the world. Soybean is one of the most important agricultural commodities in the international market, and the number and the nature of sustainability measures, policies, and initiatives in the Brazilian and in the global soybean supply chain have increased exponentially. However, the extraordinary expansion of soybean cultivation to be associated with a range of negative socio-economic and environmental impacts. Over the last 15 years, various measures and policies have been designed and implemented to address the sustainability concerns surrounding the entire soybean life cycle, but – despite some progress – none has proven to be entirely successful yet. Hence, the question of how to best design and harmonise sustainable policy instruments in the soybean supply chain remains open. In this paper, we initially describe the main features of the Brazilian soybean supply chain – both domestically and in terms of its role in global trade flows – and the wide spectrum of related impacts on the economy, society, and natural ecosystems. Acknowledging that the boundaries between the different types of sustainability measures across the soybean supply chain can be blurred, we organise different measures into broad institutional categories – starting from international, multilateral, and bilateral agreements, moving then to domestic policies and regulations, later concentrating our attention on voluntary tools, and finally exploring other sustainability measures not included in previous groups. We review and discuss strengths and limitations associated with each measure, developing an original and intuitive visualisation framework to position different measures within the institutional landscape, pointing out their jurisdictional boundaries and highlighting the set of stakeholders vested with the power to influence the design and implementation of various instruments. In the conclusion, we point out three key considerations. First, the same tool can have heterogeneous impacts on different communities and territories – both below and beyond national-level boundaries. Second, while sustainability measures in the soybean supply chain have increased in number and diversified in their scope, their level of integration and harmonisation is still limited, requiring further efforts for the identification of the optimal policy mix to ensure their effectiveness. Third, different measures typically address only a narrow set of dimensions of the broader social and environmental sustainability spectrum, and the level of integration of different instruments across geographies and stakeholders appears to be still limited to address global sustainability concerns in an harmonised and holistic manner