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VIVE and the FSA: A Decade of Traceable, Context‑Driven Sustainability Progress

9th April 2026

SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) continues to serve as a unifying reference point for sustainable sourcing across global agricultural supply chains.

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As companies seek comparable data, credible verification, and a practical pathway for sustainability improvements, the FSA’s harmonised framework supports this increasingly expected direction. This is illustrated by the latest FSA case study on VIVE, which shows how an equivalent sustainability programme can drive both traceability and continuous improvement in some of the world’s most complex commodity networks.

VIVE’s programme, co‑owned by Czarnikow (CZ) and Intellync, was benchmarked to the FSA over 10-years ago, (Silver level equivalent), allowing participants to work from one recognised structure while operating in highly diverse regions and commodity contexts. This equivalence means suppliers do not need to navigate competing standards: the same FSA‑harmonised approach guides their self‑assessment, third‑party verification and long‑term improvement planning. It ensures that progress is locally relevant, risk‑based and commercially grounded — the core principles on which the FSA was built.  

VIVE’s results show their approach working at scale. With more than 2.7 million tonnes of VIVE‑verified material, 18 origin countries, 17,400 farms and over 100 buyers — many of them SAI Platform members — the programme demonstrates how FSA‑equivalent systems can be embedded into global commodity flows, from sugarcane and sugar beet to fruits, nuts and other raw materials. Its ability to provide verified traceability across multi‑tier supply chains, including those with several intermediaries, is particularly important for buyers seeking dependable, independently validated information. 

From SAI Platform’s perspective, this case study reinforces why harmonisation matters. When programmes like VIVE build on the FSA rather than creating parallel systems, suppliers face fewer barriers, buyers receive consistent data, and the industry can focus its collective efforts on genuine improvement rather than administrative complexity. VIVE is not the headline but rather the proof point of a trusted system. The FSA remains the central tool enabling scalable, credible sustainability performance across global commodity systems, and this case shows VIVE approach delivering exactly as intended.