Advancing Carbon Transparency Across the Value Chain

ADM is uniquely positioned to connect agricultural production to emerging lower-carbon markets, offering customers options to pursue lower-carbon solutions. 

Credible data is essential to understanding and managing environmental impacts across agricultural value chains. As sustainability reporting and emissions management become increasingly important, companies are looking for more accurate data to support decision-making. 

ADM has achieved Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) Branded Data verification for multiple soybean meal and hull supply chains, providing customers with access to certain carbon footprint data based on ADM's actual sourcing, processing and logistics networks. This empowers customers to better understand the emissions profile of their purchases and support their sustainability objectives with confidence. 

"This verification is an important step in providing the transparency and credible data our customers need to better understand and manage the carbon footprint of their feed ingredients," said Emmanuel Lemoine, Vice President, Global Trade. "By making supply-chain-specific data available, we're helping customers turn sustainability ambitions into more informed sourcing decisions." 

From Industry Averages to Supply Chain-Specific Data 
Industry-average emissions data can provide a useful baseline, but it may not capture the unique attributes of individual supply chains. By leveraging supply chain-specific data, companies can access a more representative view of product-level environmental impacts to support reporting and sourcing decisions. 

Using comparable allocation methods, some of the verified supply chains demonstrated substantially lower carbon footprints than GFLI default values, including approximately 88% lower for specific Paraguay supply chain flows and approximately 50% lower for specific U.S. supply chain flows. These results highlight how supply-chain based data can differ significantly from industry-average assumptions and provide a more representative view of product-level environmental impacts. 

Historically, carbon footprint information has often been based on industry averages. ADM's GFLI-verified data provides customers with product-specific information derived from the specific supply chains. 

The verification confirms that ADM's carbon footprint calculations align with GFLI's methodology for company-specific life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluations, providing customers with more confidence in the data they use to support reporting, value chain initiatives and sustainability programs. 

Looking Ahead 
ADM is continuing to expand access to GFLI-verified carbon footprint data across its soybean meal portfolio. Later this year, coverage is expected to extend to additional soybean meal supply chains, including products from ADM facilities in Hamburg, Germany; Europoort, the Netherlands; and Rondonópolis, Brazil. 

ADM is also exploring opportunities to apply the methodology across additional products and commodities, extending access to verified carbon footprint data across more of its portfolio. 

"We're incredibly proud of this achievement and the hard work behind it," said Kirstin Jurgensen, Export Protein Trader at ADM. "But what really matters is what it enables: access to credible information that helps us better understand and manage environmental impacts across the value chain." 

As expectations around sustainability evolve, ADM is combining supply chain expertise, sustainability leadership and global collaboration to advance carbon transparency for customers and provide stakeholders with the trusted data needed to make informed decisions. 

ADM's GFLI Branded Data verification is another step in the company's commitment to advancing transparency, traceability and responsible sourcing, helping customers make more informed decisions with greater confidence. Learn more about ADM's broader responsible sourcing efforts in Partnering to Build a Responsible PKE Supply Chain.