You are: Retailer or Brand (End-Buyer)

Status: Implementing HRDD

While you are often multiple steps removed from the initial point of harvest, your commitments and actions significantly impact the whole supply chain. Because you are also consumer-facing, you face the most significant reputational risk when human rights violations occur anywhere within your supply chain. You have an important leadership and norm-setting role that enables and encourages responsible practices, from sourcing through to the marketplace.

As you develop your human rights due diligence (HRDD) program throughout your supply chain, the Collect & Assess and Engage steps in the Roadmap can offer ideas and best practices. These steps also include direct advice and guidance to enhance your program, such as:

• Work with your tier 1 suppliers to map all downstream suppliers, vendors, agents, and subcontractors to the production level.
• Require suppliers to disclose labor recruitment processes, wage structures, and working conditions. Standardized questionnaires or third-party audits can be used for this purpose. Use information gathered from desk research and risk assessments to identify the products and supply chains associated with the most severe human rights impacts. 
• Partner with NGOs or labor rights groups to provide external oversight and support for grievance mechanisms, which will enhance credibility and trust among workers. Leverage worker-informed, geographic, and product-specific data from investigative reports, surveys, worker interviews, academic research, and union communications. Use this information to understand risks from the perspective of workers.
• Develop partnerships and long-term relationships with suppliers. By increasing the proportion of long-term contracts and suppliers in your supply chain, you maximize your ability to plan and incentivize your suppliers’ HRDD investment, participation, and progress.  

The Tips and Examples sections of the Roadmap provide examples and case studies that show how these steps can be implemented.

Cargill has established a multiyear purchasing program that directly ties progress in several sustainability measures to pricing and third-party verification of results. Cargill is making progress via long-term contracts, which are used to establish farmer organizations so producers can aggregate their own production for sale; provide assistance, including some types of financing, to help small producers (including investments in equipment, new varieties of trees, and infrastructure improvements like irrigation); bring technical assistance and training to producers, directly or through their associations; and support producer communities, including assistance in building schools, clinics, and other public infrastructure.