Feeding 1% of the world’s population without negatively impacting the environment: how Agrotools contributes to McDonald’s mission

“Every meeting started with ‘This project is impossible’ before Agrotools.”

McDonald’s Global Sustainability Director

McDonald’s Corporation is the world’s largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers a day, the equivalent to 1% of the world’s population, being one of the largest buyers of beef in the world. With a strong name in the global food supply, the company is aware of the brand’s representativeness in society, which places the group in a strategic position to be an influence upon the improvement of people’s lives and the environment.

For this reason, the group created its own policy of socio-environmental practices to commit to eliminate deforestation from its global supply chains where McDonald’s can have the biggest impact by 2030. This goal is foreseen in the document Commitment on Forests, created by the corporation and which should govern the purchase of the company’s main raw materials. The company has publicly declared its intention to obtain part of the beef from suppliers that participate in sustainability programs that align with the principles and criteria of the GRSB (Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef) and that meet its requirements for sustainable production. The big question was how to meet this goal in practice. How to monitor a huge number of suppliers in different countries in real time.

Digital Big Mac

“The Brand solution enables the digitization of information in the supply chain, protecting the greatest asset of companies: the brand itself.”

Breno Felix, Product and Innovation Director of Agrotools

With 100% Brazilian technology, Agrotools took on the challenge of tracking the origin of beef potentially linked to McDonald’s in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

The digital solution Agrotools Brand was the appropriate technology to support this monitoring initiative. The tool – also used by big names in retail such as Carrefour, Frooty and Walmart – was developed due to the growing need to understand the backstage of agribusiness and, in addition to that, it was influenced by several international sustainability treaties and protocols, which led some big names in the retailers to change their commodities acquisition processes to comply with the new sustainability conventions, guaranteeing the shielding of their brands, avoiding damage to their reputation and, consequently, to their revenue.

Brand technology allows companies to know that their products meet the standards required by the market and society, gathering potential links in the supply chain on a single platform.

“The success of the partnerships established by Agrotools lies in the fact that we develop technologies created to assist in the acquisition/concession of raw material/sustainable credit, in compliance with the respective sustainability to the world’s existing protocols.”

Sergio Rocha, CEO of Agrotools

What support does Agrotools’ solution give to McDonald’s?

• Improve understanding elements of the corporation’s value chain by digitally, handily and effectively monitoring beef in select geographies
• Adapting the company’s sustainability policy for select biomes
• Tracking the potential volumes of meat purchased by McDonald’s, in compliance with the Deforestation Free Beef Procurement Policy 
• Assessing potentially linked-to-McDonald’s farms using satellite imagery, along with data analyses to determine if the areas comply with the policy

McDonald’s Corporation’s idea is to inspire other companies and people – involved or not with the brand – to make some difference for the planet.

Does your company indirectly buy agricultural raw material and want to protect the brand, and mitigate reputational risks during the process? Discover the Agrotools BRAND digital solution.