Cargill's 2024 Impact Report: Advancing sustainability in aquaculture and beyond

Cargill recently shared its Fiscal Year 2024 Impact Report, which details the company’s progress towards its sustainability commitments and showcases the work being done on the ground to drive even greater global impact across operations, supply chains and communities.

With 34 aquafeed mills worldwide, the company reported a challenging 2023 for sourcing raw materials, maintaining relatively steady use of co-product ingredients in its aquafeeds. For coldwater feeds, 49.7% of raw materials were co-products, while for warmwater, the figure was 68.2% — slightly below the prior year but still above the 64.5% achieved in 2021.

Regarding marine ingredients, the company reduced coldwater fishmeal and fish oil inclusion by 1.5 percentage points year-over-year. Additionally, 34.5% of total marine ingredients by volume were sourced from trimmings, which have lower impact on fisheries than ingredients from forage fish. In coldwater feeds, 89.5% of marine ingredients were from certified or FIP sources; while 62.2% of marine ingredients in warmwater feeds were from certified or FIP sources.

Cargill aquafeed business continues to expand its portfolio of novel ingredient options such as algal oil, soy protein concentrate through its partnership with Houdek, single-cell proteins with Gas 2 Feed, insect protein and working on field trials for camelina oil in the US.

In terms of energy use, the company reports an 8.6% reduction in energy use per metric ton of production in its coldwater mills compared to 2017.

Sustainability

Cargill’s aquaculture sustainability program, SeaFurther, aims to enable its customers to reduce the footprint of their farmed seafood by at least 30% by 2030. An example is the partnership with Lerøy to reduce the carbon footprint of the fish Lerøy produces while helping the company achieve additional goals related to fish health, certified marine ingredients, and more. In 2023, their efforts reduced Lerøy’s feed related carbon footprint by 3.5% through the use of carbon insets, a reduction of 12,000 metric tons of CO₂ equivalents. Cargill also ensured that all marine ingredients in Lerøy’s feed were either certified or sourced from Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs) and continued incorporating insect proteins and algal oil into the feed. Together, they aim to reduce the carbon footprint of Lerøy’s harvested fish by an ambitious 46%.

Beyond aquaculture, the SeaFurther program emphasizes regenerative agriculture, particularly in the UK. Following successful pilots in 2022, the program significantly expanded its reach in 2023 through collaborations with UK farming partners, providing aquaculture farmers with more tools to further decrease their carbon footprint.

Cargill also collaborated with SustainCERT and Soil Capital to produce a white paper that examines ways to monitor decarbonization in intricate agricultural systems to ensure that the impact of investments in sustainability is fairly and credibly attributed along the value chain.

In 2023, Cargill joined with WWF, Finance Earth, and several other major companies to conceptualize, design, and launch the Fisheries Improvement Fund (FIF), an innovative blue finance mechanism to accelerate progress with FIPs. The FIF, which is managed by Finance Earth, aims to catalyze more than $100 million in new funding for fisheries improvement by 2030, enabling trusted partners to realize improvements on the water through a range of tools, technologies, and local partnerships.