Olam’s Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility Direction
August 21, 2011
Olam’s Corporate Sustainability & Social Responsibility Direction
At Olam we believe that we are not just accountable for only our results but also how we achieve them. Our sustainability initiatives are closely aligned with our core business and have been designed to make a meaningful social impact in the communities that we operate in.
We have remained committed to the responsible and sustainable management of our supply chain from the farm in the producing countries to the factory gate of our customers in the destination markets. By the end of FY2010, we were running more than 100 sustainability initiatives reaching more than 1.4 million farmers in 27 countries. These initiatives included improving rural livelihoods by moving farmers from subsistence based farming to commercial viability by helping them increase yield, product quality and efficiency.
To achieve this, we offer farmers extension support in terms of agronomic and technical advice and also a guaranteed market price for their produce. Some of our sustainability efforts aim at providing traceability services to leverage our supply chain networks to meet growing customer requirements. Another area where we are actively involved is in providing micro financing to the small scale farming sector in many countries. Many of our farmer improvement initiatives include an input support component either in cash or kind in terms of provision of seeds and fertilisers. We have committed resources to evaluate the impact of our business on the environment including analysis of our carbon footprint, energy consumption and fresh water usage. We also understand our responsibility to biodiversity and encourage development of degraded land and diversification of unproductive farms. In our forestry business, we have committed to the goal of moving all our forest operations to sustainable forestry management certification standards over time. We also take our role to contribute to food security seriously and support this aim by encouraging local production and through productivity enhancement programmes. To this end, we have developed multiple partnerships with governments, reputable national and international organisations and commercial partners to achieve our sustainability objectives. A more detailed description of our programmes is contained in our Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2010 which is being sent to all shareholders along with our Annual Report.
CSR & Sustainability
Our vision is: ‘to ensure that sustainable and profitable growth continues, while managing our business in a way that is supportive to communities, ensures a safe and productive workplace and is understanding of the environment’.
Guided by five (sic) key principles:
Principle 1 – Improving the livelihoods of farmers and communities through initiatives that enhance productivity and returns
Olam continues to enhance existing farmer support initiatives and introduce new ones to further strengthen and commercialise small-scale producer supply chains. These ensure that farmers increase yields, improve quality, and have direct access to markets, to maximise their incomes.
Pre-financing – We continue to assist farmers in organising themselves into working groups and securing finance through reputed commercial institutions. We also secure crop inputs and other productive income-generating assets for them.
Traceability – Increasing demand for traceability has placed considerable pressure on small-scale farming systems, underpinning all certification requirements. Olam helps farmers adopt certification systems to ensure traceability, thereby improving their market access.
Food Security – Olam is focused on replicating its ‘rice partnership’ success in Nigeria by expanding it to other areas. This involves a greater focus on local investment to meet food requirements within the country of consumption, thereby improving rural livelihoods.
Principle 2 – Ensuring a safe, healthy and productive workplace for our people and those who work in our operations
Olam realises the need for social investments to enhance community development. We contribute by: investing in processing facilities within these communities and creating employment opportunities to help farmers commercialise their practices; focusing on employee well-being through health camps (with a focus on HIV/AIDS); supporting the education of the children of employees and farming communities; and creating economic opportunities for women.
Principle 3 – Forming alliances with partners who bring beneficial skills and knowledge to our business
Partnerships are an excellent way of leveraging the competencies of international, technical developmental organisations and the private sector. Such partnerships have helped us develop solutions to complex challenges, ensuring efficient and effective deployment of scarce resources.
Principle 4 – Participating in professional associations at international and national levels to further develop our key goals
Many of our partnerships and initiatives have evolved through our active participation in industry bodies, helping us identify key supply chain issues and forming collaborations to implement positive solutions for stakeholders.
Principle 5 – Understanding the impact of our operations on the environment through energy, carbon and fresh water footprint analysis
We actively study and assess the overall operating impact of our activities on climate change and bio-diversity. Given
the complexities of supply chains, it is therefore important to define and analyse processes to determine all stakeholder responsibilities. Olam is actively determining its direct operational footprint within these categories, and has launched a comprehensive programme to analyse its energy usage, carbon emissions and freshwater consumption.
Principle 6 – Assessing the impact of our programmes on the community, the workplace and the environment
We continue to monitor and evaluate our impact on communities, the workplace and the environment through socio-economic and environmental studies.
Maintaining diversity and managing key natural resources are important, particularly for small-scale farmer-supported production systems and our upstream production activities. Good stakeholder management of natural resources is vital
in ensuring sustainable supply chains, and we continue to support and strengthen these for small-scale farmers, optimising their natural resource use. Our upstream production activities are carried out either on land already under agricultural production or by reusing abandoned degraded land.
The sustainability agenda going forward
We will continue our commitment to achieve sustainable production, maintain efficient processing operations and ensure effective delivery of our corporate strategy, through:
1.Strengthening small-scale farmer and supplier supply chains through practical initiatives
2.Understanding the environment in which Olam operates through energy, carbon and freshwater footprinting
3.Increasing representation in product and industry associations to deliver practical solutions across the supply chain
More details of our CRS strategy and initiatives are available in the 2010 Olam Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Report.
Source: http://www.olamonline.com Olam Annual Report 2010
Asia Pacific Social Media & Internet Penetration Stats
August 18, 2011
Asia Pacific Social Media & Internet Penetration Stats
Social Media’s Role In The UK Riots And What’s Likely To Happen Next
August 13, 2011
Social Media’s Role In The UK Riots And What’s Likely To Happen Next
Please read this wonderful article from TechCrunch.com by Mike Butcher to get a sense of the role of social media and mass communication devices on the UK riots and what the government is looking to do about it.
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In the wake of the UK-wide riots and the growing evidence that mobile applications like the BlackBerry Messaging system had helped rioters organise and amplify their activity, the UK government is considering a review of social media. Specifically, Home Secretary Theresa May plans to sit down with Twitter, Facebook and RIM, to discuss the issues. That’ll be an interesting chat.
She hasn’t minced her words: “Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and messaging services like Blackberry Messenger have been used to coordinate criminality, and stay one step ahead of the police… I will convene a meeting with ACPO, the police and representatives from the social media industries to work out how we can improve the technological and related legal capability of the police.”
She also said: “Among the issues we will discuss is whether we should disrupt messaging services when trouble is being planned.”
Her statements followed Primeminister David Cameron, who told parliament yesterday that “instant messaging services” (as he put it) will be reviewed. “We are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality,” he said.
Now, to my mind there is a lot of confusion going on here. Private messaging services like BBM are being confused with public social media services like Twitter – the latter of which helped the post-riots clean up enormously, and the chatter on which often prevented people from wandering into dangerous zones. It’s even helped an old man get his small businesse get back on it’s feet. Some Police forces positively love it.
The media (and the tech community) has leapt upon the Government’s statements as indicating that they plan to ban a) social platforms b) ban the people who incite riots from social platforms.
Of course, the government review will come up with obvious answers. You can’t ban social networks and you can’t ban people from using them – they will find a way.
More importantly, what the above statements indicate is that the government would like some kind of early warning system for the Police, to alert it when people are “plotting violence” or when “when trouble is being planned” on social networks.
Facebook has already reacted by saying it’s taken several potentially dubious groups off its network. Twitter has said it’s “happy to talk”. RIM is “cooperating”.
But as any keen observer of social media will tell you, trying to track sentiment on these platforms is very hard. Indeed, this problem vexes Facebook and Twitter, who have millions in funding, all the time. Do we really think the UK government is going to be able to crack that one?
I asked Nick Halstead, CEO of DataSift, what he thinks. Halstead has been doing battle with MP Louise Mensch in this very issue.
He told me:
“Just as Hedge funds are already looking to Twitter to build insights into stock movements, it is just as plausible to intelligently describe a certain behaviour and pro-actively look for patterns that may relate to unrest. Twitter themselves already detect trends but these are calculated from a global or country perspective. It is possible to apply the same trend detection techniques within a more highly curated stream. And those streams can be defined by looking at the topic of conversation, the intent of the message and sometimes even the location.”
So in other words, you could potentially track something. But would it be accurate enough?
Could you predict any kind of incitement to riot on social networks?
“I think that’s far too esoteric a concept right now for computers to understand,” he told me.
And there’s the rub. One person’s BBM or Tweet saying “It’s all kicking off in the high street” could be interpreted as an incitement to others to join a riot – or as a warning to their friends. And let’s not even go into how an algorithm is going to decipher the language of the street.
Plus, the Home Secretary is going to have to do more than visit Facebook, Twitter and RIM to deal with the issues of the spreading of messages about riots.
Our research has found healthy use of the WhatsApp application among London’s youth (although BBM is far and away preferred). And let’s not go into Kik, PingChat and the rest of the group messaging startups.
And there’s the small matter of Facebook Messenger coming out, and Apple’s iMessage. All of these will be group messaging leviathans.
Put simply, the private mass messaging genie is out of the bottle.
So the irony of the situation is that in order to get an early wind of a “situation”, the government should be positively encouraging people to join social networks, not come off them or shut them down.
Apart from anything else, the more data there is in the system, the more the crowd can deal with people who might be inciting a riot and bring them to the awareness of the authorities.
Indeed, the Police should not be looking for ways to shut down the BlackBerry BBM (I’m simply going to assume they will ask GCHQ to snoop on it anyway, and I’d be amazed if it’s not already).
Instead, the Police should simply grab the ecosystem with both hands. The Guardian and other media showed how it was child’s-play to simply get a Curve handset, circulate a PIN and then get forwarded BBM Broadcasts about riots and looting by concerned citizens.
Hey, how about even some old fashioned Policing, whereby you get an informant to forward the dodgy messages?
But the fact that the @metpoliceuk Twitter account, has made 589 tweets in two years and remains a broadcast-only account with zero interaction with the public, speaks volumes about the Police’s knowledge of how these platforms work.
So let’s fix THAT problem before we talking about monitoring.
Far better for the Police to set up a special social engagement unit – or something similar – than for us to end up with a Minority Report style society.
Would You Like To Develop A Product Socially?
August 6, 2011
Would You Like To Develop A Product Socially?
Finally a solution that seems to work. Do go ahead and give it a go.
Concern For Man And His Fate By Albert Einstein
August 6, 2011
Concern For Man And His Fate By Albert Einstein
“Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”
- Albert Einstein
Great Spirits by Albert Einstein
August 6, 2011
Great Sprits by Albert Einstein
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form.”
- Albert Einstein, in the New York Times, 1940
What Is Social CRM All About?
August 5, 2011
What Is Social CRM All About?
Do You Still Think Social Media Advert Spending Is A Fad?
August 3, 2011
Do You Still Think Social Media Advert Spending Is A Fad?
Take a look at the following statistics and decide for yourself.
FaceBook Statistics 2011
August 1, 2011
FaceBook Statistics 2011
FaceBook Facts & Figures + Social Media 2011
August 1, 2011
FaceBook Facts & Figures + Social Media 2011
