Inge Jacobs
Global Sustainable Sourcing Lead, Mars Food and Nutrition
The Challenge
Rice is the world’s primary crop and food staple, feeding half of the world's population. Yet, it is one of the most water-intensive commodities worldwide, requiring more than twice the average irrigation needs of most other crops and accounting for 40% of all global irrigated water usage.
Challenges such as floods, droughts, and rising sea levels threaten rice production, leading to significant economic losses and critical food instability. Recent examples include the floods in Bangladesh that impacted 40% of rice fields, and the drought in Spain that affected 80% of the country’s farmland. Moreover, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) predicts a 25% reduction in available water for rice production by 2050.
The sensitivity of rice fluctuation affects the world on a global scale and demands companies like Mars to ensure adequate water risk management across their supply chain. This is crucial for water security and the stability of their business, but the communities they serve.
Yet the problem lies in the complexity of gathering and understanding water risk data, which demands multiple data sources, significant time, and specialized expertise in water management.
The Solution
Mars Food and Nutrition partnered with Waterplan to gather and centralize water risk data of rice growing regions and evaluate their current and projected water-related risks.
Using Waterplan's advanced technology and comprehensive water risk data, alongside Mars Food and Nutrition’s supplier requirements and specific business needs, we conducted a thorough analysis of various rice-sourcing regions worldwide.
The Results
With Waterplan’s time-saving technology, the analysis was conducted in only one month, providing a scalable and cost-effective solution to gather and measure water risk data across 9 States in Pakistan and India.
Waterplan’s platform gathered and centralized water risk data from multiple internal and external data sources, including water availability, quality, flooding, satellite, climate, geospatial, local scientific, and public research data.
Waterplan’s proprietary risk framework provided a comprehensive understanding of the current and future water risk exposure of each region. Scarcity, flooding, quality and regulatory risks were identified and analyzed for each location.
Productivity, price, and crop performance data were integrated into the analysis to incorporate industry context into the analysis. Additionally, rice price variations were analyzed to determine whether past floods and droughts have driven price fluctuations.
Data-driven assumptions of the risk evolution in different regions were made to identify whether regions with low-medium risk exposure were suitable sourcing locations for Mars Food and Nutrition in the long term.
The different states were classified on a scale ranging from less suitable to highly suitable sourcing regions for Mars Food and Nutrition, considering water risk exposure, vulnerability to the risks, the region’s production capacity, and Mars Food and Nutrition’s specific requirements.
As a result of the partnership, Mars Food and Nutrition gained a deeper understanding of water challenges and opportunities in each sourcing location and can continue to monitor risk evolution in these regions and predict future water-related challenges.
