Assessing and managing environmental, social, and governance risks in agri-food companies

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks to which agri-food companies are exposed and the various practices they adopt to manage them. An analysis of the sustainability reporting produced by 135 agri-food companies that are relatively committed to ESG risk management shows the wide diversity of ESG risks they consider as well as the very uneven coverage of these risks in corporate disclosures. This article proposes an integrative model to describe how agri-food companies handle risk management based on four main topics: assessing and monitoring ESG risks; internalizing risk management; implementing standards, approaches, and specific tools; and preventing risks through innovation and stakeholder partnerships. This article makes important contributions to the emerging literature on ESG risk management and corporate sustainability in the agri-food industry, notably by mapping such risks and by summarizing the main practices used by agri-food companies to manage them.