Sustainability standards: Growth picks up after a dip in 2020

Growing consumer demand for healthier, ethically produced goods is driving the steady rise of sustainability standards in agriculture and forestry. The latest State of Sustainable Markets report reveals that more farmland than ever is dedicated to cultivating standard-compliant crops, underscoring the expanding influence of these certifications.

Partnerships to track sustainability standards

The State of Sustainable Markets 2024: Statistics and emerging trends is the eighth edition of this global report, published by the International Trade Centre (ITC) in collaboration with FiBL (the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) and the International Institute of Sustainable Development, with support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.

This year’s publication provides data from 2022 on 11 major standards across eight agricultural products: 4C, Better Cotton, Bonsucro, Cotton Made in Africa, Fairtrade International, GLOBALG.A.P., IFOAM (Organics International), ProTerra Foundation, Rainforest Alliance, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Round Table on Responsible Soy Association. The report also offers forestry data sourced from the Forest Stewardship Council and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification.

‘Sustainability standards … provide a framework for companies to ensure that their operations are environmentally friendly and socially responsible,’ the report says. ‘These standards serve as a signal to consumers, demonstrating a company’s commitment to ethical practices and thereby enhancing its reputation and marketability.’

Certified products, such as certified palm oil and soybeans, often go unlabelled. While demand for these foods is growing in Europe and North America, expanding consumption requires greater demand in new markets – notably emerging economies and producing countries, with a particular focus on Asia.

About 20% of world’s cotton crops are certified

Certified agricultural areas expanded 13.7% in 2022 after an unusual 4.2% dip in 2020 that was attributed to many factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Cotton continued to dominate – with a fifth of the global cotton area, or at least 6.6 million hectares, certified in 2022. More than 31% of the global cocoa area, or 3.65 million hectares, was certified that year, with the certified area increasing by 44.5%. The certified area for soybeans expanded by almost 34% while the certified sugarcane area grew by 31%.

In 2018–22, the certified area for most crops grew significantly, with soybeans increasing by 50%, sugarcane by 37% and oil palm by 25%. Organic certification continued to dominate, reflecting strong consumer demand for healthy food products. More than 96.6 million hectares of farmland were certified organic in 2022 – equivalent to 2% of global farmland and nearly twice the size of Australia.

The 11 sustainability standards cover at least 9% of the world’s total land dedicated to harvesting the agricultural products covered in the report. Several standards enjoyed considerable growth in their certified areas in 2021–22, with Bonsucro more than doubling its coverage while the Round Table on Responsible Soy saw a 52% increase.

The minimum certified area for the eight commodities reviewed – bananas, cocoa, coffee, cotton, oil palm, soybeans, sugarcane and tea – grew by 7.1% in 2021–2022. The certified cotton and tea areas shrunk in that period – cotton by 1.4% and tea by 10% – while the certified forest area contracted by 9.7% in due to the suspension of certificates in the Russian Federation and Belarus in connection with the war in the region.

Sustainability standards tackle a wide range of challenges, from labour issues and biodiversity loss in banana and sugarcane markets to deforestation, soil erosion and agrochemical use in the tea sector. With more than 400 such standards worldwide, they increasingly influence national and regional governments – particularly in developed markets – as these bodies shape their own regulations.