Bimbo’s Pinto seeking supplier partnerships
Karyn Pinto, senior global sustainable sourcing manager of Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV, stated that suppliers play a key role in the company’s strategy to meet corporate sustainability goals.
Speaking at the company’s Global Vendors Meeting 2022 in Mexico City in November, Ms. Pinto provided a live or Zoom summary of the company’s sustainability initiatives centred on regenerative agriculture (RA) to hundreds of its suppliers in attendance. By 2050, Bimbo pledges to have net zero emissions.
While climate change poses risk for all of humanity, the resultant damage already is having an adverse effect on the ability of companies like Bimbo to conduct business as usual, Ms. Pinto said.
“We’re seeing destruction of natural ecosystems,” she said. “We’re seeing soil degradation, and we’re seeing catastrophic weather events. More frequently, more severe than we’ve ever seen on this planet. With that, we know that agriculture plays a significant role.”
Grupo Bimbo currently generates about 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, Ms. Pinto said. Half of the total comes from agriculture.
“Farming practices such as tilling the ground, the use of chemical fertilizers and other practices are degenerating the soil,” Ms. Pinto said. “When I talk about target … net zero, that’s part of why we want to engage in RA. That’s not really the main goal. The main goal is to help food security not only for our generation but for generations to come. Some practices that used to be generally accepted in many parts of the world are not going to get us there.”
Bimbo’s plan is to scale up participation over the next couple of years, which Ms. Pinto described as a “learning period” for the company to ensure the program is workable for growers but also fully meets the company’s sustainability objectives. By 2025, the company is determined to have the program fully in place and positioned for scaling up with a target of 200,000 hectares enrolled in RA programs by 2030. At that point Bimbo will “scale up its learnings to start the journey with strategic raw materials,” Ms. Pinto said.
Along the way an objective will be closely monitored beyond enrolling more and more land into the program, Ms. Pinto said.The objective is to see soil health improve,” she said.
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Ms. Pinto spoke passionately about the potential benefits of RA across the three pillars of Bimbo’s sustainability strategy dealing with nutrition, the environment and communities.
“Grupo Bimbo has the power to effect systemic change in this space through the adoption of regenerative agriculture, a system of agricultural production that prioritizes the environment and increase the biodiversity in the soil and enhance the communities we work with,” she said.
Ms. Pinto closed with a call to action based both on the threat climate change poses and the need for the grain-based foods industry to do its part to combat climate change.“No one is coming,” she said, explaining that the forces precipitating climate change will not magically disappear.It’s up to you,” she said. “It’s up to me. It’s up to us. Because no one is coming.”