How to meet EUDR, SBTi FLAG and customer requirements while managing costs in the livestock and feed Industry

How to meet EUDR, SBTi FLAG and customer requirements while managing costs in the livestock and feed Industry

The livestock and feed industries are under growing pressure to reduce their environmental impact. With regulations like the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and FLAG (Forest, Land, and Agriculture) targets, along with commitments under the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), feed suppliers and livestock producers need to act now to comply with new requirements and secure their future.

Livestock accounts for approximately 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and feed production alone contributes approximately 45%-60 % of those emissions (source: ScienceDirect). With the 2030 EU climate targets fast approaching, transitioning to sustainable feed strategies is critical—not just for compliance, but for reducing emissions, improving animal health, and maintaining long-term profitability.

However, building and comparing feed mix solutions for a cost-effective sustainable transition plan is far from simple. It requires collaboration across many stakeholders, including procurement, live operations, innovation teams, farmers, feed producers, finance, and sustainability teams. These stakeholders often rely on spreadsheets, emails, and lenghty presentations in static presentations, creating a back-and-forth process prone to errors and inefficiencies. With thousands of data points—spanning emissions, financials, nutrition, and regulations—keeping everything accurate and up to date is nearly impossible without a centralised solution.

This blog explores the environmental impact of livestock and feed, the cost of inaction, and how integrating data and processes into a single system like Unibloom can save time, reduce costs, and streamline decision-making to reach 2030 climate & financial targets.

Why the feed industry needs to change

1. Emissions from feed and livestock

• Livestock feed is a key driver of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to:
  • Deforestation: Soy and other feed crops are linked to land-use changes and deforestation, driving biodiversity loss and increasing carbon emissions.
  • Methane emissions: Poor feed quality contributes to inefficient digestion, leading to higher methane emissions from livestock.
  • Nitrous oxide from fertilisers: The production and use of fertilisers for feed crops result in significant nitrous oxide emissions.
• If feed-related emissions are not addressed, livestock producers will struggle to meet the 30-50 % emissions reduction target by 2030 outlined by the EU and SBTi (source: WWF Food Forward).

2. The cost of inaction

Failing to act on more sustainable feed mixes comes with severe risks:

• Drought and resource scarcity: Unsustainable feed practices contribute to deforestation and water shortages. Droughts, in turn, reduce crop yields, increasing feed prices and jeopardising supply chains.
• Animal health and productivity: Poor feed quality leads to reduced animal productivity and increased disease risks, affecting profitability.
• Regulatory penalties: Non-compliance with EUDR and FLAG requirements could result in fines, market exclusion, and loss of major customers.
• Reputation damage: Companies that fail to align with sustainability commitments risk losing their competitive edge in a market increasingly driven by environmentally conscious consumers.

The challenge of managing a cost-effective sustainable feed transition

Creating an actionable financially viable emissions reduction plan for feed is complex and resource-intensive:

• Multiple stakeholders: Procurement, operations, farmers, feed producers, finance, and sustainability teams all play critical roles. Each has different priorities, leading to inefficiencies and delays.
• Thousands of data points: Calculating the right balance of feed mixes requires integrating emissions, costs, nutrition, and regulatory data. This rarely happens, and also, across the value-chain, the primary emission factors are rarely shared.
• Inefficient processes: With data spread across spreadsheets, emails, and power points, the process becomes error-prone, hard to update, and slow to adapt to new requirements or insights.

Without a centralised, digital system, managing these processes can take months, costing hundreds of thousands in resources and delaying critical decision-making.

Steps to take now

1. Identify hotspots
   • Focus on high-impact areas like deforestation-linked feed ingredients, inefficient feed conversion ratios, and fertiliser use.
2. Model and compare scenarios
   • Use tools like Unibloom to test multiple feed strategies and evaluate trade-offs between cost, emissions, and nutrition. Use secondary global data from trusted sources where you miss out on data and replace when more granular data is accessible.
   • Set your targets on new mixes to be inline with future SBTi targets, nutrition and financial requirements.
3. Collaborate with stakeholders
   • Align procurement, operations, finance, and sustainability teams in one centralised system to ensure shared ownership of sustainability goals. Drive digitised and data-driven collaboration with suppliers, when you know where you want to go and what data you are missing.
4. Invest in long-term solutions
   • Commit to sustainable feed investments now to avoid higher costs and risks in the future.

Case Studies: Success in transition to a more sustainable feed mix

Case Study 1: Big FMCG pork (sausage) producer need new solutions to meet SBTi 2030 targets

A big food producer partnered with Unibloom to address the emissions impact of its pork supply chain in Netherlands. By leveraging Unibloom's centralised scenario modelling, supportive climate team & its expertise in Life Cycle Assessment Initiatives and Innovative Solutions, the food producer aligned procurement, R&D, and Net Zero teams with a unified, data-driven approach. This streamlined collaboration internally and with suppliers, enabling informed discussions on possibilities and trade-offs to achieve 2030 SBTi and financial targets. Their approach on a high level outcome

• Approached data-driven discussion to replace high-emission feed ingredients with sustainable alternatives based upon various insights and comparison.
• Decision balanced on cost, emissions, and nutrition without compromising animal welfare.
• Integrated these strategies into their Scope 3 SBTi-aligned emissions reduction plan, helping them reduce emissions by up to 20% compared to baseline levels.

This proactive approach not only strengthened the food producers commitment to sustainability but also reinforced its relationship with suppliers by providing actionable data and clear collaboration frameworks.

Case Study 2: Poultry producer preparing for 2030

A Nasdaq-listed Unibloom client, a leading poultry producer, is taking a forward-thinking approach to meet its 2030 sustainability targets. With Unibloom, the producer has already Identified key gaps and build out the climate emission plan in one place and linked key projects with financials in Scope 1 & 2 to the targets, accessible for all departments. In the next phase they will use Unibloom to engage both internally and externally by:

• Using scenario modelling to test multiple feed strategies, ensuring waste efficiency, nutrition and sustainable sourcing while reducing emissions together with live operations and procurement internally.
• Building a collaborative financially viable climate action roadmap with internal stakeholders first, to align on shared sustainability & financial goals and priorities.
• Collaborating across the value chain to both align with farmers and feed producers plans and targets, to meet optimal emissions reductions across feed mixes, and also integrating FLAG and EUDR compliance into its supply chain strategy for maximal impact.

By leveraging Unibloom’s tools, the producer is ensuring that its entire feed supply chain is ready for future regulatory and customer requirements, reducing risk while improving operational efficiency.

How Unibloom can help

Unibloom provides feed suppliers and livestock producers with the digital Climate Action & Simulation tools to streamline and simplify sustainability planning:

1. Centralised scenario modeling

• Unibloom integrates cost, nutrition, emissions, and compliance metrics into a single platform.
• For example, the food producers pork brand used Unibloom to look at how to replace high-impact feed ingredients while maintaining cost efficiency and nutritional standards.

2. Automated calculations and integrated data

• Automatically integrate emissions factors and secondary data from trusted sources like Agri-footprint when primary data is unavailable.
• This eliminates the need for manual calculations, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring data accuracy.

3. Collaboration across stakeholders

• Unibloom allows procurement, operations, finance, farmers, and sustainability teams to collaborate in one centralised digital tool, reducing back-and-forth communication and aligning everyone on a single, actionable plan.
• The poultry producer, for example, uses Unibloom to coordinate emissions reductions across the operations and planning for collaborating with customers and suppliers to ensure compliance with SBTi FLAG and EUDR standards.

4. Faster decision-making

• With real-time updates and automated scenario modelling, Unibloom helps users reduce the time spent on feed planning by up to 60 %, enabling decisions in days rather than months.
• Visualise the various initiatives with abatement cost and insights, for confident decision making for non climate experts.

5. Cost savings

• By eliminating inefficiencies, Unibloom can help save feed suppliers months of calculations, resources time and external costs while optimising feed strategies for emissions, nutrition, and financial performance.

Meeting EUDR, FLAG, and SBTi requirements is essential for feed suppliers and livestock producers to remain competitive and compliant. By investing in digital tools like Unibloom, you can save time, reduce costs, and minimise risks while building a sustainable future for your business.

Unibloom simplifies the complexity of feed sustainability planning, providing automated calculations, centralised data, and integrated emission factors to help you make informed decisions faster.

Join Unibloom's webinar on January 23rd, in collaboration with Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk on "How to use secondary data to create future reduction initiative scenarios together with internal teams and collaborative suppliers faster, cheaper and better". Sign up here.

Schedule a demo today, watch the video and start building a cost-efficient, sustainable feed plan for 2030 together. calendly.com/anna-sandgren or anna.sandgren@unibloom.world (https://unibloom.world)

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