CAN SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING MAKE A DIFFERENCE?: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ON SUSTAINABILITY REPORTS OF BIST LISTED AGRI-FOOD COMPANIES IN TURKEY

Abstract

Agri-business is a huge industry including all operations from farm level production to storage, manufacture and distribution of agricultural commodities. This fact together with worsening social and environmental conditions and pandemic crises have added to change in perception of agriculture in economic construction. The following decades will most probably witness a resurgence of agriculture-based development recipes having been informed by social, environmental and governance dimensions of sustainability. This article searches for the sustainability reports of agriculture-related firms listed in BIST in Turkey. Sampling includes 11 out of 64 listed agri-business firms having recent sustainability reports, which are examined by qualitative data analysis techniques with MAXQDA software. The first argument our findings support is that agri-food sector is lagging behind to catch up sustainability reporting compared to other sectors. Second, companies are more ready to comply with issues that are legally regulated. Third, environmental problems are more addressed than social and economic sustainability standards. This study also shows the relative unimportance of topics such as child labor, pesticides use, supply chain traceability, women entrepreneurship and geographical indication, which can have positive impacts for Turkish agricultural space if a backward push of big companies through integrating these topics more into their sustainability reporting process. This article contributes to the literature on sustainability in general and reporting in agri-food sector in particular.