Our Previous Challenges

The issues of food security and climate change are particularly severe for Africa as much of the continent is drylands with predominantly rain-fed farming systems. This is made even more difficult to manage with predictions of a 20% reduction in southern Africa rainfall by 2100 and 10% for other dry regions including Mexico. Inconsistent rainfall and poor soil moisture retention are some of the main challenges affecting smallholder farmers and can impact their ability to hit expected yields. This is further worsened by lack of timely soil moisture data. Soil water holding capacity needs to improve to maximise productivity which will enable sustained growth in both farmers’ communities and our brands.

Carbon is the chemical backbone of life on earth: it helps give soil its water-retention capacity, structure, and fertility. Soils with a high carbon content tend to be healthier, more resilient to weather-related crop failure and provide better yields through improved nutrient uptake. To accelerate to a low carbon world and become sustainable by design, building economic, environmental and social resilience within smallholder communities, we need to support better soil health through adequate measuring, modelling, interpretation and monitoring of changes to soils at a biological, chemical and physical level.

Diageo is on a vital journey to better measure and manage our global impact on the natural environment. As a global leader in beverage alcohol, we have a dependency on agricultural and, to a lesser extent, forest commodities, we recognise that our activities have the potential to contribute to impacts on nature and biodiversity. We endeavour to measure and report our impact, mitigate the risks and work towards a positive environmental contribution. We are actively engaged in the Science Based Targets for Nature initiative and seek to apply the emerging standard to our supply chain to better understand and manage our nature-related impacts, dependencies, and risks. We need technical solutions to support us in measuring, reporting, and verifying our biodiversity impacts across smallholder value chains.