Well-being of our growers

Tens of thousands of people worldwide harvest and package our fruit and vegetables. We invest in long-term partnerships with responsible growers who ensure good working conditions and are committed to supporting surrounding communities. Together with our carefully selected growers, we continuously work on improvement through intensive contact, visits and annual independent audits.

Go to content

Improving social well-being

When we started Nature’s Pride in 2001, there were no international standards for the well-being of employees in the cultivation regions. We saw this as an opportunity to add value and developed our own guidelines for social well-being in 2006. Since 2011, we ask all our growers to perform independent social audits. Today, 100% of our product volume is socially certified. Certification requires that our suppliers comply with at least the basic standards for working conditions and respect for human rights.

The role of certification

Applying standards and certifications through independent audits is an important way for us to monitor, make transparent and further improve working conditions and, for example, the climate impact in our value chain. All our suppliers must comply with one of the standards from the ‘Basket of Water Standards’ and the ‘Basket of Social Standards’. These standards were developed in collaboration with the SIFAV (Sustainability Initiative Fruits and Vegetables) sector initiative and are applied by affiliated companies.

The importance of a long-term approach

To make a lasting contribution to improvement in local communities, certain situations require a long-term approach that involves more than audits and certification. To facilitate this, we engage in a dialogue our growers, stimulate relevant developments and focus on continuous improvement of working conditions and reducing the climate impact.

The human aspect of water

WASH stands for access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. Because WASH is vital for the health and dignity of employees, it is one of the priorities in our Care for People focus area. Our analysis reveals that agricultural value chains face specific WASH challenges, ranging from seasonal workflows to working in remote locations. However, there are also opportunities to strengthen resilience and enhance well-being. What distinguishes our approach to WASH is our focus on the human aspects of water. Care for water also encompasses care for the people who grow, harvest and package the products we offer.

Working on WASH

WASH provides a practical framework to mitigate risks in our supply chain and improve the well-being of the people concerned. In partnership with RVO (the Netherlands Enterprise Agency) we set up a WASH project at our grower Agrícola Cerro Prieto in Peru. The project aims at directly improving sanitary facilities, and we also work on safeguarding structural attention for WASH. We aim to actively share and spread the knowledge gained during the project. The key insights and lessons learned have been presented in a case study.

Case study: Lessons from the 1st year of our WASH project with ACP

Enjoy today, changing tomorrow!