Responsible Sourcing

The success of our business depends on agriculture crops and the farmers who grow them, which become the foundations of the ingredients we produce for people to enjoy around the world. We work closely with farmers, suppliers and communities to understand the inherent social and environmental risks in agriculture supply chains.

Our Commitment

As part of our Kellanova Better Days™ Promise goal to create better days for 4 billion people by the end of 2030, we are committed to advance the wellbeing of 250,000 people in our food value chain, from farming communities to processors, prioritizing support for vulnerable groups by the end of 2030 from a 2023 baseline. To progress against this goal, we abide by a methodology based on industry best practices and aimed at driving meaningful and scalable impact.

We are committed to building resilient global supply chains by responsibly sourcing 12 priority ingredients: cocoa, corn, eggs, freeze dried strawberries, hazelnuts, potatoes, palm oil, raisins and sultanas, rice, soy, sugar cane and wheat. In accordance with our Better Days™ Promise methodology, we select our priority ingredients for responsible sourcing with regular regular materiality assessments. Our most recent assessment took place in 2023.

As a global food company, Scope 3 emissions from ingredients and packaging play a major role in our carbon footprint. Reducing emissions from our ingredient supply chain is a major driver of meeting our Better Days™ Promise goals, including our commitments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emisions and enable a climate-positive future.

By improving soil health and encouraging the reduction of inputs like fertilizer and pesticides, we also can improve water quality, biodiversity, increase climate resiliency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Our Approach

Our strategies are designed to address our most salient environmental and social issues and opportunities in our supply chains. These strategies include a combination of direct investment at origin, third-party verification & certification, and farm-level continuous improvement programs.

Direct Investment and Verification/Certification

For crops like sugar cane, palm oil, and cocoa, we source our priority ingredients using a combination of third-party certification, such as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and direct investment in our sourcing regions to address more severe impacts to people and planet, including but not limited to deforestation and human rights risks.

“Origins” Direct Investments

We also invest in on-the-ground interventions to support farmers, including smallholder producers, in regions with systemic challenges that current supply chain models have only partially addressed to date. These direct investments are all included in our Origins™ program. Kellogg Company created Kellogg’s Origins™ to build partnerships with farmers that support their climate, social and financial resiliency. We work with our ingredient suppliers, research institutions and non-profit organizations around the world to provide farmers and workers in our sourcing regions with on-the-ground training and technical assistance they need to improve farm productivity, regenerate soil health, protect species and habitats, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve their livelihoods in ways that protect and respect both the environment and human rights.

  Continuous Improvement

For row crops including corn, wheat, rice, potatoes and fruits, we source our priority ingredients by measuring continuous improvement at the field and farm levels across key environmental and social indicators of sustainable, responsible agriculture. In partnership with our suppliers, we have used or accepted industry-standard survey tools and calculators, including the Cool Farm Tool, Field to Market’s® Fieldprint® Platform or SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment. Where equivalent industry tools are not available, we use the Grower Survey, an annual farm management survey that we developed and first launched in 2016 (as Kellogg Company) to document and measure on-farm management decisions with farmers over time.

We collaborate with suppliers, project partners and farmers to collect this data and share results with suppliers and producers. This process helps to identify opportunities with suppliers and farmers to support improvements. Our continuous improvement tools gather information about one or more of the following environmental and social indicators, based on each tools’ capabilities and relevant concerns for the crop and its growing location:

• Input optimization, including fertilizer and pesticides
• Farm productivity
• Conservation or regenerative agriculture practice adoption, such as conservation tillage, cover cropping, crop rotation, integrated pest management, buffer strips, nutrient management, biodiversity measures, and climate risk mitigation strategies
• Worker safety practices, such as use of personal protective equipment and health and safety training
• Environmental outcomes, such as greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and water quality

Approaches and Programs, By Priority Ingredient Category

• Corn
• Freeze Dried Strawberries
• Potatoes
• Raisins/Sultanas
• Wheat
   
• Cocoa

Kellogg Company began a partnership in 2022 with Enveritas, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that verifies global supply chains for multinational food companies. Their focus is on hard-to-reach, fragmented smallholder supply chains, such as cocoa and coffee. Throughout the year, Enveritas assessed and verified approximately 40% of Kellogg Company’s cocoa purchases, all originating from Cote d’Ivoire. This work provided an overview of our procurement footprint within the country.

The Enveritas assessment covers a wide range of social, environmental, and economic criteria including child labor, forced labor, deforestation and banned pesticide use. Utilizing recent cutting-edge technological advances in AI and satellite imagery, the Enveritas system goes beyond traditional schemes through more efficient, effective, and comprehensive on ground assessments that focus on progress over perfection, targeting smallholders, and holistic community specific interventions. 

3 Principles of Claims

Continuous Improvement: Responsibly sourced is not just pass/fail but a journey. Claims based solely on “100% sustainable” or “100% compliant” risk excluding smallholder farmers with fewer resources to meet certification standards, don’t incentivize transparency, fail to address root causes.

Representation: Supply chains are dynamic and porous. Representing all farmers requires verifying the state of sustainability practices outside of traditional supply chain silos. Regional verification enables buyers to evaluate and support making truthful, independently-verified claims about purchases that come from supply chains that have limited traceability.

Engagement: Verification can make engagement more effective and effective engagement can improve sustainability. Engagement in the form of projects, training, etc. can have a direct, long-term impact on sustainability scores and producer livelihoods.

Continuing into 2023, Enveritas has been supporting Kellogg Company in creating a workplan to further our responsible sourcing goals and efforts in cocoa and will continue to support Kellanova.

• Eggs

Our responsible egg-sourcing strategy has two components: advancing our plant-based focus by reducing our use of eggs as an ingredient, and transitioning the eggs we do use to cage-free.

Since 2022, we’ve cut our global egg use by 28%, and we continue these efforts through product reformulation or removing products from the portfolio entirely. Additionally, 1% of global egg purchases were cage-free. Following is a further break-down by geography:

• North America: 1% cage-free egg products
• Latin America, Egypt: 0% cage-free egg products
• Europe, Asia: we do not purchase egg products

Kellogg annually reports our progress against our responsible sourcing goals, and we have a path to demonstrate continued progress against our egg reduction and cage-free transition goal. We expect to transition about 40% of our global egg portfolio by the end of 2023 and about 65% by the end of 2024, through both egg elimination and increased cage-free egg sourcing. Specific to cage-free, globally, as of Q3, we are on track to achieve 17% cage-free eggs by the end of 2023 and 25% cage-free by the end of 2024.

We purchase egg ingredients (liquid and powder egg, and dried egg whites) rather than whole eggs in shell – and at a smaller scale than others – which make sustainable cage-free options a challenge. Availability has recently been impacted by inflation, market fluctuations and a recent, sharp decline in supply availability because of avian flu. We continue to work with our suppliers to find effective ways to source cage-free egg ingredients that do not exacerbate already surging egg prices for consumers.

Kellogg will continue to transparently report on the two key aspects of our egg sourcing strategy: sourcing of cage-free eggs plus substantially reducing our overall egg use. This will be published in our Better Days™ Promise update each year in Q3, as well as interim progress updates towards our goal of reaching 100% cage-free eggs in our products by end of 2025.

• Hazelnuts

Kellanova sources some ingredients that contain hazelnuts grown in Turkey. Due to material social issues in this region, including farmer and worker rights and fair recruitment, we have added ingredients made with Turkish hazelnuts to our responsible sourcing priorities.

• Palm oil

Since 2009, Kellogg Company, has been on a journey to responsibly source palm oil, evolving strategies and actions to ensure best practices and learnings are incorporated into our responsible sourcing program. In 2020, Kellogg updated their Global Palm Oil Policy and our first Global Policy on Deforestation, which continues to be embraced by Kellanova.

Kellanova is committed to purchasing 100% physically certified palm oil (RSPO) by the end of 2025. We are currently on track to meet this goal, having achieved 80% at the end of 2022 (as Kellogg Company). Our work has continued to expand through direct investment with Wild Asia, a Malaysian non-profit organization that supports smallholder farmers increase their ability to achieve certification through multiple interventions including providing training on regenerative and sustainable agricultural techniques.

• Rice

In 2021, Kellogg Company conducted a pilot program, InGrained™, collaborating with Lower Mississippi River Basin rice farmers, agribusiness firm Syngenta and leading agricultural GHG measurement firm Regrow to implement climate-positive practices to help reduce their impact on the climate. During the pilot year, farmers achieved a reduction of more than 1,600 metric tons of greenhouse gases.¹ Kellanova will continue with this program.

¹ Measured in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) through increased carbon sequestration and abatement of GHGs including methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O)

• Soy

Starting in 2021, Kellogg Company added soy to its priority ingredients for responsible sourcing. In 2017, Kellogg first signaled support for responsibly sourced soy by supporting the Amazon Soy Moratorium, joining the Cerrado Manifesto Statement of Support (SoS). Since then, soy has become a more important part of our business, from the growth of our MorningStar Farms^® brand in the United States, to the 2017 acquisition of Parati^® in Brazil.

In 2021, 93% of Kellogg Company soy ingredients were sourced from markets with low deforestation risk, such as the United States. For the remaining volumes (7%) we continue to work with our suppliers to mitigate environmental risks.

• Sugar Cane

We are undergoing a strategic review to build on our current program to responsibly source sugar cane to advance toward our goal of 100% Responsibly Sourced by 2030. To date, we have continued to support on the ground projects and interventions focused on field worker health and safety, partnership with mills, responsible recruitment, and collaborative initiatives with peer companies.

Beginning in 2021 and continuing through 2022, Kellogg Company partnered with Proforest in Mexico to invest in a program to support and promote the health and safety of sugar cane cutters, who are particularly vulnerable to human rights risks in sugar cane supply chains. The program provides free personal protective equipment to farm workers and delivers trainings in health and safety practices.

Since 2019, Kellogg has been an active member of the Alliance for the Sustainability of the Sugarcane Agroindustry (ASACAM) in Mexico. The group is a cooperative and voluntary partnership comprised oforganizations in the sugarcane agroindustry value chain, including agricultural producers, sugar mills represented by the National Chamber of the Sugar and Alcohol Industries, six multinational food and beverage companies, and the public sector represented by the National Committee for the Sustainable Development of Sugarcane.

ASACAM was convened in recognition of the need for producers, processors and buyers to establish a common agenda in activities related to the sustainability of the sugarcane agroindustry in Mexico. The Alliance’s focus is to promote pre-competitive and multisectoral support to promote country wide sustainability initiatives that take into account the unique opportunities and most salient issues present within the country.

Our Journey

Kellanova is a new company with a foundation that’s more than a century long. We are committed to carrying forth the legacy of Kellogg Company, who led with purpose to create a positive impact for people and planet. Like our name signals, we’re building on that legacy of doing good, built over the previous 117 years, while looking ambitiously toward the future. 

Progress reported below is for Kellogg Company through the end of 2022. Kellanova will report on progress toward our commitments in our initial Social and Environmental Report that we will issue in 2025. 

^[1] Measured in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) through increased carbon sequestration and abatement of GHGs including methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O)