WWF: how UK supermarkets can credibly reduce emissions from animal feed

A new report from WWF has laid out how UK supermarkets can credibly claim reductions in emissions from soy, a key feed crop for poultry, pigs and farmed salmon.

Much of the soy imported to the UK is grown in Brazil’s Cerrado, one of the world’s most important but threatened ecosystems. The Cerrado plays a crucial role in storing carbon, regulating water and supporting biodiversity including jaguars and maned wolves — yet conversion for soy continues at scale.

For UK retailers and manufacturers, emissions linked to deforestation and conversion can account for a significant share of their climate footprint. Cutting these emissions is essential for meeting climate targets.

However, under current rules, only emissions reductions that can be physically traced through supply chains and are robustly monitored can be included in company scope 3 inventories. This means that many well‑intentioned landscape and conservation investments fail to show up in reported progress, which creates a barrier to seeking further investment.

The new WWF report, ‘Soy Production in the Cerrado: Unlocking Investment in Landscapes Through Credible Greenhouse Gas Reporting’, examines how companies along the supply chain including manufacturers, retailers and food service companies can credibly reduce and report their scope 3 emissions through investing in deforestation and conversion free soy.

This report provides a clear framework for making scope 3 claims from deforestation and conversion free (DCF) soy sourced from the Cerrado, focusing on how a company can trace soy across the supply chain, and provide the necessary monitoring of the climate benefits of DCF soy.

There are, however, major challenges to overcome. Soy moves through complex, multi-level supply chains with extensive multi-state logistics networks, large aggregation hubs and shared storage facilities which makes maintaining sufficient traceability difficult. In addition, many tools used for monitoring emissions arising from soy production are not aligned with the key accounting standard’s requirements.

The report explores how these challenges can be overcome using the example of a new pilot scheme by the Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF).

The RCF is an initiative backed by UK retailers Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose that supports soy farmers in Brazil’s Cerrado with financial incentives if they commit to maintaining native vegetation on their farms and producing DCF soy.

This year, an RCF pilot scheme is applying the findings of this report to understand how retailers can make a credible scope 3 claim for soy produced through the initiative. This pilot will provide important learnings for how credible scope 3 claims can apply to soy sourced from the Cerrado. Under the scheme, digital certificates – Traceability Certificates of Compliance (TCCs) – travel with the soy through the supply chain, recording how much soy is produced and its emissions up to the farm gate.

WWF found that soy produced from the RCF had over 30% lower greenhouse gas emissions than typical Brazilian soy, predominantly because it has been produced on land that has not been recently deforested, showing the opportunities for reductions to corporate scope 3 emissions targets are significant.

While the Cerrado remains under threat of expanding soy production this report provides a pathway for companies to invest in this landscape, whilst credibly meeting their own climate commitments, unlocking more private finance for nature.

WWF is calling on supermarkets to:

• Prioritise what matters most by focusing monitoring on land‑use change – the single biggest source of emissions in soy supply chains – using satellite and remote‑sensing tools that reduce costs and farmer burden.
• Strengthen traceability, collaboratively by working with suppliers, traders and peers to pilot practical traceability systems that link farm level outcomes to real soy supply chains.
• Be transparent about limits by reporting wider landscape and biodiversity benefits transparently, outside of the GHG inventory, where current accounting rules prevent them being included in scope 3 emissions.

Paul Marsh, climate change specialist, WWF UK said: “Protecting critical ecosystems like the Cerrado is essential for the climate, for nature, and for the long-term resilience of global soy supply chains. This is why supermarkets and other members of the supply chain must invest in these critical sourcing landscapes.

Food companies have the responsibility to take action, but have lacked a credible pathway for reporting the climate benefits of their investments. This report shows how those investments can deliver real emissions reductions against their climate target and reinforces that they can, and now must, cut deforestation out of our food system.”

Steven Ripley, Director – investor engagement, Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF) said: “Proven, practical standards that can be implemented in the supply chain help drive investment into commodity-producing landscapes, while unnecessarily complex or constraining standards that are difficult or impossible to implement can slow progress.

When companies can clearly connect their investments to their supply chains, the investment case is compelling; when they can’t, it quickly weakens. RCF Trace is an active collaborative lab bringing together some of the most influential soy supply chain companies and leading service providers. Together, we are testing what is both workable and credible to unlock recognition—and accelerate capital flows—into commodity production landscapes.”