Our approach to managing water use in agriculture is to work with our suppliers and their farmers. We do this by embedding our Unilever Sustainable Agriculture Code (SAC), along with our technical expertise, into our grower base. We launched the Code in 2010 and updated it in 2015. This sets out standards for water, irrigation management and catchment-level water conservation, the impacts of which will be monitored further in 2016.
Through our work, we have jointly implemented over 4,000 water management plans with our growers, which also lock in continuous improvement activities. As well as reducing water consumption, we aim to reduce overall water use by increasing yields. If farms can increase yields through using best-in-class varieties, or better soil and nutrient management for example, then water use per tonne of product produced will also go down.
We work with farmers in water-scarce areas. For example, 70% of Spanish strawberries come from the Doñana region – a protected wetland with unique biodiversity. Irrigated farms currently abstract around three times more water than the capacity of the aquifer. Our programme aims to establish good relationships with the Spanish authorities to ensure a supportive legislative environment and we work with farmers to help implement best practices that protect the natural water resources. Our programme is supported by SAI Platform and the Sustainable Food Laboratory, with industry partners such as Coca Cola, Groupe Danone, Ahold, and NGOs such as the Ramsar Convention and WWF.
Ahead of the UN Climate Change conference in Paris in 2015, we extracted from the SAC all requirements relevant to Climate Smart Agriculture, so we could offer our suppliers a stand-alone document. Whilst this is primarily about greenhouse gas emissions, the climate adaptation component covers topics such as, water scarcity, drought, and efficient irrigation techniques.