23rd May 2024

The winners of this year’s Bonsucro Inspire Awards were announced yesterday at Bonsucro Global Week. The winning projects address critical sustainability challenges in human rights, the environment and the sugarcane value chain.  

We also celebrated our members’ commitment to continuous improvement and awarded a special lifetime achievement award for services to sustainability in sugarcane.  

Best value chain sustainability initiative 

This award recognises the work of our members to ensure the resilience and sustainability of their supply chains.  

The winning project is: 

Green Rural Loan – Socicana, in partnership with Sicoob Coopecredi, Brazil 

Green Rural Loan is a new line of financing exclusive to farmers who have proven their sustainability credentials through Bonsucro certification, or participation in TopCana (Socicana’s sustainable development programme). It grants interest rate discounts on loans in line with how sustainable the farmer’s production practices are, allowing farmers to save up to 20% on the cost of a loan in a year.  

More than 120 sugarcane farmers already have access to the programme, and more than USD $1.33 million have been awarded to date. 

Best social sustainability initiative 

With issues such as gender equality, diversity and safe working conditions prevalent in the sugarcane supply chain, this award recognises a strong initiative for human rights. 

The winning project is:

Mechanised harvesting: Sugar Woman’s – Ingenio La Union, Guatemala 

Sugar Woman’s is a programme generating employment opportunities in agriculture for Guatemalan women. Ingenio La Union helps the women develop the skills they need to build their career, from corporate induction to technical training and transferable skills, and technical evaluation.  

The project has involved creating schools to help the women gain the required knowledge, and those who complete the programme receive a diploma from the Technical Institute for Training and Productivity, which has significant weight and recognition in Guatemala.  

At present the programme has led to 85 women working across two harvesting groups – and 21% of sugarcane harvested at Ingenio La Union is now harvested by women. 

Best environmental sustainability initiative 

Improving the environmental impact of sugarcane is central to accelerating sustainability in the sector. Many of our members go above and beyond to make their operations more environmentally sustainable through a variety of projects.  

The winning initiative is: 

Regenerative and sustainable management of sugarcane with high agricultural yield – BP Bunge Bioenergia, Brazil 

This project aims to eliminate the use of chemical fertilisers, across 11 of BP Bunge Bioenergia’s production units, thereby reducing production costs and improving sugarcane’s environmental impact.  It focuses on two main methods: organomineral fertilisation, derived from recycled industrial waste such as vinasse and ash, and replacing nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers with specific bacteria.

This strategy, combined with other initiatives, contributed to a 34% reduction in scope 1 emissions during the last harvest. 

These three categories were judged by our independent panels of experts in the fields of social, value chain and environmental sustainability. We’d like to thank them for their time, effort and insights throughout the process.

Lifetime contribution  

This year we have celebrated Robert Quirk, an independent farmer from Australia, for his lifetime contribution to sustainability in sugarcane, and his lengthy partnership with Bonsucro. 

Robert has been growing sugarcane in New South Wales since he left school in 1959. A founding member of Bonsucro, Robert was the first ever Chair of the Bonsucro Board of Directors and spent seven years on the Board until his retirement in 2016. He received lifetime membership to Bonsucro in 2009 and the Bonsucro Sustainability Award in 2012.  

Robert has been an ambassador for both Bonsucro and sustainability in sugarcane at conferences and on visits to sugarcane producers around the world. His practical hands-on research and peer-reviewed papers have led him to speak at conferences in 30 countries, on a diverse range of topics such as sustainable sugarcane growing and building soil carbon.  

Robert has also sat on many national and international committees for sugarcane and been a consultant to the sugarcane industries in Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Fiji and Nicaragua.  

Continuous improvement awards 

Continuous improvement is a key component of our strategic plan. We recognise that sustainability is a journey, and that becoming more sustainable will look different in different contexts. Each year, to give insight into our members’ progress, we ask them to submit their Continuous Improvement Report.  

It covers their commitments, progress and plans on sustainable production, processing and sourcing of sugarcane.  

The Continuous Improvement award goes to the producer and buyer organisations whose reports scored the highest for quality of answers and evidence submitted. The winners are:

Producer: São Martinho S/A, Brazil
Buyer: PepsiCo, United States of America 

This year, we are also celebrating the organisation who showed most evidence of improvement in their report from the previous year. The winner of the award for “most improved report” is:

Omnicane, Mauritius 

Congratulations to all our winners. We’re pleased to see the dedication of our members to accelerating sustainability in sugarcane, and look forward to seeing their continued progress over the coming year. 

Find out more about the Bonsucro Inspire Awards.