Communication and Training

In order to maintain high standards in accordance with our human rights policy, we work to achieve measurable results and monitor our progress. We track progress across several key areas including employee training, business partner compliance, and child labor.

EMPLOYEE TRAINING:

To make sure employees are kept up-to-date with our Human Rights Policy and its implementation, we require employees to complete computer-based training every few years.

BUSINESS PARTNER COMPLIANCE:

We strive to identify and do business with partners who share our commitment to human rights and ethical business practices. For the business partners with whom we contract directly, their contracts require that they understand and work  to uphold the elements of our Human Rights Policy. We conduct periodic audits of our suppliers to ensure they are acting consistently with our Human Rights Policy. When violations of our policy are identified, our first choice is to work with our business partner to improve their practices in compliance with our standards. Sometimes, business relationships need to be terminated.

HELPING ERADICATE CHILD LABOR:

The use of child labor is a systemic problem throughout India. Our Child Care Program (CCP) Steering Committee oversees efforts to monitor our business partners’ fields in India, remove any child laborers younger than the legal age limit of 14, and encourage parents to enroll these children in school.

One of the ways Monsanto minimizes instances of child labor in India is through our Model Village designation, a title awarded to communities with at least 50 farmers or 16 production hectares that have had no child labor observed by the CCP monitoring during the season. As an incentive and in recognition, Monsanto provides in-kind donations to schools in every Model Village.

SEED SUPPLY AND LABOR PROVIDERS

We view our seed supply and labor provider contracts as areas of significant investment where human rights have the potential to be affected. By 2012 100 percent of the contracts contained language requiring our business partners respect human rights. We had contracts with 30,732 business entities in 2015.