Corporate Transparency, Sustainable Development and SDG 2 and 12 in Agriculture: The Case of Ukraine

Abstract

This paper explored sustainability transparency and SDGs 2 and 12 disclosure and its influence on their overall efficiency, using data from Ukrainian agricultural companies. To do this Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) methodology is developed and used. The following hypothesis is tested: the higher the STI score is, the better position of the company is among its peers. For these purposes, STI index is calculated for the top100 Ukrainian agriculture companies. Correlation analysis, Granger causality tests and regression analysis provide evidences in favour of high dependence of position in top100 from the STI score: the more efforts companies invest into Sustainability Transparency, the higher the position in ranking is. This is direct evidence that companies' sustainability transparency is an important element of its activity nowadays. Recommendations to improve sustainability transparency based on suitable reporting practices are provided in this paper.

Headnote

Abstract

This paper explored sustainability transparency and SDGs 2 and 12 disclosure and its influence on their overall efficiency, using data from Ukrainian agricultural companies. To do this Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) methodology is developed and used. The following hypothesis is tested: the higher the STI score is, the better position of the company is among its peers. For these purposes, STI index is calculated for the top100 Ukrainian agriculture companies. Correlation analysis, Granger causality tests and regression analysis provide evidences in favour of high dependence of position in top100 from the STI score: the more efforts companies invest into Sustainability Transparency, the higher the position in ranking is. This is direct evidence that companies' sustainability transparency is an important element of its activity nowadays. Recommendations to improve sustainability transparency based on suitable reporting practices are provided in this paper.

Keywords

Sustainable development goals, transparency, sustainability reporting, Sustainability Transparency Index, agricultural management, resilient agricultural practices.

JEL Classification: Q01; O13; O44.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)

Introduction

According to United Nations, key problems of humanity are health care, climate changes, poverty and gender inequality. In 2015, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets were introduced on global and national levels (United Nations, 2015) to solve these problems. SDGs caused serious changes in the behaviour of economic subjects. Companies have paid more attention to sustainable development and become more transparent about these efforts to the world (Androniceanu, 2021).

One of the tools for achieving the SDGs is to strengthen the regulatory requirements for the disclosure of information by companies on environmental (E), social (S) and governance (G) ESG - criteria. Ensuring the transparency of the business environment and reporting on the incorporation of CSR into the activities of companies is the key to effective monitoring of progress in achieving SDGs in the corporate sector.

ESG investing comprises' financial and ethical paradigms is to prioritize investments that positively impact society and the world. ESG investment has become a prominent and influential industry, constituting a significant portion of global equity portfolios and funds (Daugaard, 2020).

On micro level financial performance of companies with social-responsible investment is better than traditional ones (López et al., 2007; Nicolescu et al. 2020). The positive impact can be ensured by different socially responsible activities - both internal and external. Particularly, there are obvious links between investments in human capital, including practices of personnel development, and firm performance (Samoliuk et al., 2021; Urbancová & Vrabcová, 2020). These links are typical for enterprises of different age and size (Bilan et al., 2020; Çera et al., 2020) and first of all responsible practices have impact on financial performance (Myšková and Hájek, 2019; Vo et al., 2020).

According to Statman (2000), ESG-based stocks outperform traditional ones. From the geographical point of view, ESG indices perform better in the European markets than in the US ones (Cortez et al., 2009).

According to the MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) 2021 Global Institutional Investor survey (a survey of 200 asset owner institutions with assets totalling approximately $18 trillion), over three-quarters (77%) of investors increased ESG investments "significantly" or "moderately" in 2020, with this figure rising to 90% for the largest institutions (over $200 billion of assets).

Companies use SDGs and ESG for communication with stakeholders and emphasis its fundamental role in value creation potential, social benefits, risk mitigation (Indahl and Jacobsen, 2019; Androniceanu, 2019).

The last decade has been marked by the dynamic development of regulatory disclosure tools based on ESG criteria and SDGs. More than 300 governmental and non-governmental, mandatory and voluntary instruments have been introduced in the 50 largest countries by GDP (both developed and developing UNPRI, 2016b).

Plastun et al. (2019) showed that the more ESG criteria are used for disclosure regulation, the higher the country's ranking in the Ranking of 50 largest economies. Non-government corporate ESG disclosure has the most significant influence. In Plastun et al. (2020) the linkage between countries SDGs achievement ranking and country's ranking in the Ranking of 50 largest economies was showed additionally. Ukraine's adoption of a national SDGs target system in 2017 unites it with the global community. However, the level of SDGs progress in Ukraine compared to the 50 leading countries in the world is low - 46th out of 149 countries in the 2016 Global SDG Indicators Database (2016). Sukhonos et al. (2019) showed that corporate social responsibility activity in Ukraine is relatively low because of the low perception of sustainability ideology and reporting. Plastun et al. (2021) provide some preliminary explanation of SDGs 2 and 12 disclosure achievements in Ukraine agriculture companies and found that problems in their achieving are similar for these countries.

Agriculture plays a fundamental role in daily life, providing livelihoods for one-third of the global population and enabling food production. The sector accounts for 9.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) across developing countries and 26% of GDP for the world's leastdeveloped countries. In 2018, agriculture added USD 3.3 trillion to the world economy, up 50% from 2008 (USD 2.2 trillion).

Agriculture is not only the key sector of public support (Pronko, 2020) but also one of the key spheres to achieve SDGs, because it deals with food security, hunger, waste-free production and reduction of environmental pollution (Oláh et al., 2021; Popp et al., 2021).

Agriculture provides impact on the multiply SGDs from "No Poverty" (SDG 1) to "Zero Hunger" (SDG 2) and "Sustainable Consumption and Production" (SDG 12).

According to GIIN (Sunderji et al., 2020) the highest affected SGDs are SDG 8 "Decent work and economic growth" (81%), SDG 2 "Zero Hunger" (68%), SDG 5 "Gender equality" (62%) and SDG 1 "No Poverty" (57%).

Despite the evidence that sustainable management practices are important for business, ESG-efforts in agriculture are very limited.

The key guidelines in conducting agribusiness based on sustainable development for companies worldwide are Food and Agriculture Business Principles, developed by the UN Global Compact network. The fundamental principle is "encourage good governance and accountability", which requires companies to be transparent and highlight their influence.

Based on data from Ukrainian agricultural companies, this paper aims to show that sustainability transparency issues is an important element nowadays. To do this Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) methodology is developed and applied to the top100 Ukrainian agriculture companies. Correlation analysis, Granger causality tests and regression analysis showed that the higher the STI score, the better the company's position in the overall ranking of agricultural companies. This is direct evidence that sustainability transparency of the company is vital element of its activity nowadays.

Materials and methods

The samples of the biggest companies were formed to conduct a comparative study of the agricultural companies' transparency in Ukraine and their disclosure about SDG 2 and 12.

To select Ukrainian companies, the website Latifundist, 2021 was used. It presents the top 100 agricultural holdings of Ukraine in terms of the land bank.

Preliminary, for each company, the Englishlanguage web-sites and the most recent published sustainability reports were analysed. In case of their absence, sites and reports in Ukrainian were analysed. The study was conducted in March 2021.

The research methodology included the author's questionnaire on the status of disclosure by companies on SDG and CSR, emphasising certain ESG-criteria through content analysis of sites and reports of agricultural companies.

The question list included the following parameters and their options, which describe the sustainability disclosure state by agricultural companies (Table 1).

This questionnaire was used for Ukrainian companies to characterize their sustainable development transparency and Goals. Next questionnaire was transformed into binary form. It makes it possible to normalise the values of the studied information parameters and sustainability reports of Ukrainian agricultural holdings and build their Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) (Table 2).

The algorithm of the normalization method of values of sustainability disclosure parameters, CSR and SDG in the reporting of agricultural holdings within the specified limits is the following. First, it is necessary to find the number of parameters for the index, the number of verified criteria and set the maximum evaluation value. Let the maximum index value be from 0 to 100. Similar algorithm was used in Makarenko et al. (2020) They analysed sustainability reporting in Ukraine in ESG disclosure based on The Quality and Compliance Bank Management Reports Index and showed a low level of compliance in the country as well. Then the algorithm consists of the following steps:

1. Finding minimum and maximum number of evaluation criteria [min; max].

2. Finding the number of verified criteria - x.

3. Setting the maximum value for k.

4. Calculation the rating value according to Equation 1.

... (1)

The calculated values of the index are presented on a 100-point scale with a letter rating system. The minimum point is E, then the maximum is A. Totally, there are 5 evaluation sets with certain intervals that can be represented as follows:

1. А [80;100]

2. B [60;80]

3. C [40;60]

4. D [20;40]

5. E [0;20]

Below is example of STI calculations for the case of "Kernel" (Ukrainian agricultural company). Out of 25 general evaluation parameters, 11 were verified for "Kernel" (Equation 2):

... (2)

Results and discussion

The UN Global Compact is a supranational organization that brings together companies that have signed ten principles of socially favourable, environmentally friendly policies that protect human rights, fight against corruption, and actively promote SDGs. The global network includes 13,555 companies from 162 countries, and published 81,808 reports (communications on achieving these principles). In Ukraine, signatories are 107 wellknown companies such as agro-industrial holding Astarta-Kyiv, MHP, Kernel.

As a result, we see a lack of involvement of companies from the agricultural sector to communicate on SDG progress in Ukraine. These communications can take place not only in the reports according to the principles of the UN Global Compact but also in the sustainability, compiled according to one of the many standards (SASB, CDP, GRI), etc. The leading codified sustainability reporting system is the GRI system of standards. In total, it presents 15,588 organizations with 63,582 reports.

In Ukraine, 22 companies have published 78 reports during the time of the database existence. The same three agricultural companies are signatories to the UN General Assembly (agro-industrial holding Astarta-Kyiv, MHP, Kernel). These data indicate a small representation of agricultural companies in both countries in the commonly accepted bases for sustainability disclosure.

The extensive research on SDG incorporation into the Ukrainian companies' activities by non-governmental institutions is conducted by the CSR Ukraine and UN Global Compact Network Ukraine. In particular, the latest study in 2020 included an analysis of 116 cases from 64 companies on CSR in 2016-2019 and 97 non-financial reports of companies that are the largest taxpayers in 2015-2019 (Figure 1).

SDG 2 is one of the least mentioned goals by companies. The vast majority of companies are in the Top-100 Ukrainian companies representing the mining, metallurgical and energy sectors.

Regarding SDG 12, primarily Ukrainian companies' contribution is conducting educational activities on separate waste collection and management. However, according to the dynamics of SDG 12 indicators, progress in this area is insufficient.

At the same time, SDGs 2 and 12 are partially integrated into corporate sustainability strategies, investment strategies and CSR practices. The solution to this problem could be to encourage companies to SDG disclosure and implement strict requirements for including the goals in forming the management report and key companies' indicators in terms of SDG.

The UN Global Compact Network Ukraine (2021a) provides alternative data on incorporating the SDGs 2 and 12. In particular, in 2020, 1 case on SDG 2 implementation in companies' activities was introduced, and 3 cases related to SDG 12 (Table B.1).

A detailed analysis of the UN Global Compact Network cases in the context of their goals, the solutions aimed to achieve them allowed drawing a foregone conclusion. First of all, the investigated cases do not apply to agro-industrial companies. Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine, Food Bank, Subsidiary with foreign investments Pernod Ricard Ukraine is indirectly involved in the food industry.

Unfortunately, these cases do not contain data on investment in these projects, which is primarily due to insufficient SDG disclosure by Ukrainian companies and the low quality of their communications with stakeholders. 37% of Ukrainian companies do not have their website. It does not allow to conclude their level of transparency in CSR and SDG initiatives. Three Ukrainian companies have non-functioning websites (Svitanok, Freedom Farm, Greenstone).

Half of the analysed Ukrainian agricultural holdings have information on SDG and CSR on their website.

59 out of 100 Ukrainian agricultural holdings do not have a CSR policy published on their website. Meanwhile, such a policy does not correlate with the size of the company's land bank. In particular, five companies from the top 10 agricultural holdings of Ukraine (Agroprosperis, Mriya, Epitsentr Ahro, HarvEast Holding, IMK) do not have sustainability policies, and some companies have their website (Agroprosperis, Mriya, Epitsentr Ahro).

Kernel has the largest number of formalized corporate sustainability policies (number one in the Latifundist (2021) rating according to the land bank size). It has a sustainability policy, environmental protection, community cooperation, labour protection, industrial, technical and transport safety. Astarta-Kyiv is the third in the ranking and has a policy on sustainable development, a plan of interaction with stakeholders, a policy to fight against corruption.

19 out of the 41 Ukrainian companies have integrated some fields of accountability, transparency and sustainable development at the policy level into corporate governance. The vast majority have policies to promote rural development, projects and communities (Figure 2). In second place are the general policies on CSR, sustainable development, interaction with stakeholders (7 companies). In the third place is a set of policies that characterize the various areas of corporate volunteering, philanthropic activities and the creation of safe working conditions (5 policies).

Analysis of the Ukrainian agricultural holdings under the duration of sustainability reporting (according to the list of available reporting periods disclosed in the reporting) shows that most companies cover traditional financial statements for the last 3-5 years.

Only Astarta (8 reports for 2013-2020), MHP and Kernel (6 non-financial reports for 2015-2020) follow the tradition of sustainability reporting.

Regarding the sustainability disclosure format and its goals, the transparency of Ukrainian agricultural companies is quite negative. It is by the fact that 50% of companies do not disclose sustainability issues (Figure 2), and do not submit even publicly available financial statements on their websites.

In addition to the two categories of Ukrainian agricultural holdings (50% of those that do not disclose about themselves, and 31% that provide separate sustainability information in the annual financial or consolidated financial statements), there is a group of agricultural holdings led by Kernel. This 8% of the 100 companies have a regular section in the annual report, which describes their progress towards sustainable development and its goals for stakeholders. Non-financial and sustainable development reports are generally published only by MHP and Astarta. Sustainability information and CSR is presented on the corporate pages of APK-Invest, Zelena Dolyna, Kusto Agro and KSG Agro. Other disclosures on sustainable development by Ukrainian companies are sporadic.

An important marker of the transparency of Ukrainian agricultural holdings and their compliance with the legal requirements for nonfinancial reporting in Ukraine is their accordance (as large and medium-sized companies) with the requirements of the Law "On Accounting and Financial Reporting" to prepare a management report and disclose according to ESG criteria.

Out of 100 surveyed Ukrainian agricultural holdings, only 14% have published management reports covering social, environmental and governance aspects, the company's operating environment strategy (Figure 3). In this aspect, the most successful companies are MHP, Agroprosperis, Astarta, Vitagro, Nibulon, AgroGeneration, Zakhidnyy Buh, Dnipro Agro Group, Ukraine-2001, AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANY, A.G.R. Group, SAT, Ecoprod, Cygnet Agrocompany, Kischenzi.

Ukrainian agricultural holdings mainly disclose their initiatives regarding environmental and social aspects of sustainable development and their criteria. Also, Ukrainian companies pay attention to anti-corruption and good management practices (16 and 14% ofthe 100 surveyed Ukrainian agricultural holdings). 13 Ukrainian companies cover environmental, social, governance and anticorruption initiatives in their activities.

In addition, six companies out of the top 10 Ukrainian agricultural holdings covered all criteria (Kernel took the 1st place, MHP - 2nd, Astarta-Kiev - 4th, Mriya - 5th, HarvEast Holding - 7th, IMK - 8th, Nibulon - 16th, Grain Alliance - 24th (Baryshivska Grain Company), Zakhidnyy Buh - 27th, Agromino - 28th, Ukraine-2001 - 38th, Agricom Group - 49th, Arnica - 79th). The other seven companies are differentiated by several positions of the rating by the size of the land bank. It indirectly confirms the lack of connection between the volume of the company's land bank and its transparency on sustainable development and SDGs.

SDG 2 (7 companies) are the most actively implemented by Ukrainian companies. No companies pay attention to SDG 9. SDG 7, 8, 13 are implemented by 5 companies, and SDG 3 and 12 - by 4 (Figure 4).

The companies' activities in case of progress, targets and investments in SDG 2 are presented in the reporting information by Kernel, MHP, Astarta-Kiev, Nibulon, Agricom Group, Arnica, Goodvalley Ukraine. SDG 12 is highlighted in the reports of Kernel, Astarta-Kiev, Arnica, Goodvalley Ukraine.

Two Ukrainian companies, in addition to 17 SDGs, mention other relevant goals related to CSR and sustainable development.

For example, as a signatory to the UN Global Compact, Kernel has set an ESG-related goal - to reduce GHG emissions intensity by 5% over a five-year horizon in our oilseed processing business. The general vision of Agricom Group in the context of SDGs sounds like creating the potential of the Ukrainian countryside.

Disclosure of all 17 SDGs set obviously proved the level of agriculture sustainability transparency. But SDG 2 and 12 are the most important for agriculture companies.

It is worth to note that the highest level of SDG 2 disclosure in Ukrainian agriculture companies as a positive benchmark, created only by the largest companies with high level of STI values. As well as SDG 12 is not disclosed properly. Possible explanations of these situation is linked with initial stage of sustainable production technologies introduction by Ukrainian agroholdings as well as usage of extensive technologies in food security provision. The SDG 2 and especially SDG 12 disclosure in agriculture companies sustainability reporting should be promoted.

According to the results of the STI calculation (Appendix A), we obtained the following results (Table 3).

The average value of the index for all 100 companies is 46.58 points. However, there is a significant variation of these values (maximum 92 points stand for Astarta, and minimum 0 is present in 29 companies).

There is a relationship between the company reporting and its ownership: if the company has foreign management, it is a guarantee that it is doing well with reporting. The only exception is Prometey. As for agricultural holdings with Ukrainian management, such dependence was not found. Moreover, the large size and turnover of the company do not guarantee that it will have better reporting (if at all) than a company with a poor land bank.

Correlation analysis (correlation coefficient = -0.25) provides preliminary evidence that between Rank and STI there is a reversal relationship: the higher the STI is - the better position in the ranking the company has (or vice versa: the better the position of the company in the ranking - the higher STI has).

To find the answer to the question who is the driver: STI or Rank Granger Causality tests are performed. Results are presented in Table 4. As can be seen, the driving factor is STI. This means the more efforts companies invest into Sustainability Transparency, the higher the position in ranking is.

Based on these results, a simple linear regression Y(Rank) = f (STI) is estimated to quantify the parameters of relationship; the results are reported in Table 5.

Results imply that the Rank can be described by the following equation:

... (3)

i.e., there is a negative relationship between the Rank and the STI score. It means the higher the STI score is the better position of the company in the ranking.

We also estimate a regression with dummy variables for Y(Rank) = f(A;B;C;D;E); the results are shown in Table 6.

As can be seen, the Rank would be higher than the average for the companies from A, B, C groups. Affiliation to groups D and E means the company would be ranked below average. This is evidence in favour of rank dependence from STI score and thus transparency of the company.

To conclude, the sustainability transparency of the company is an important element nowadays. As a result, appropriate reporting practices are required.

Conclusion

This paper explored sustainability transparency among agricultural companies in Ukraine.

Agriculture is key sphere for promotion progress in SDG 2 and 12. Despite the evidence that sustainability agriculture practices are important for business, ESG-efforts in agriculture are very limited. One of the reasons of such state of art is not sufficient sustainability transparency and disclosure by agriculture companies.

Nevertheless, the Food and Agriculture Business Principles (UN Global Compact (2021b) fundamental principle is "encourage good governance and accountability", which stressed the huge role of transparent agriculture practice in achievement SDGs.

Authors proved that high-quality and verified sustainability reports, long history of reporting by international standards, participation in CSR and sustainable development networks and disclosure on SDGs (including 2 and 12) is key characteristics of agriculture companies transparency and effective stakeholder (investor) engagement.

The samples of the biggest 100 agriculture companies were formed to conduct a comparative study of the agricultural companies' transparency in Ukraine and their disclosure about SDG 2 and 12.

The following hypothesis was tested (H1): the higher the transparency, the better the company's position is among its peers. To do this Sustainability Transparency Index (STI) methodology is developed. To test H1 STI index is calculated for the top100 Ukrainian agriculture companies.

Preliminary stage of hypothesis testing was comparative analysis of the sustainability transparency of Ukrainian agricultural holdings according to the basic questionnaire and construction STI as well as benchmarking analysis of these companies progress towards SDGs 2 and 12 and CSR practice.

Benchmarking analysis shows that according to UN Global Compact, GRI SDD, CSR Ukraine a small representation of agricultural companies in both countries in the commonly accepted bases for sustainability and SDGs disclosure.

Basic questionnaire on the state of sustainability disclosure, SDG and CSR by agricultural companies includes links to sustainability information on the company's websites, existence of sustainability policy, available reporting period, SDG Reporting, Management report, disclosure according to ESG criteria.

The algorithm of the normalization method of sustainability CSR and SDG disclosure parameters of agricultural holdings within the specified limits was used for STI constructing.

Correlation analysis, Granger causality tests and regression analysis provide evidence in favour of high dependence of position in top 100 from the STI score.

Results of study means that sustainability transparency in agriculture companies is an important element of its activity nowadays. Recommendations to improve sustainability transparency based on suitable reporting practices are provided in this paper.

Main areas for improvement includes:

- verification of analytics sustainability transparency in agriculture, development of methodologies for formulating the sustainability indicator in agriculture companies reporting, verification procedures by auditors in the framework of building a CSR and SDGs (esp. SDG 2 and 12) strategy in the agriculture;

- development the requirements for reliability of the financial and sustainability reporting for agriculture companies in both countries and its mandatory audit;

- taking into account approaches to the mandatory audit of public interest companies, the promotion of good faith in the market of accounting services and agriculture market.

- promoting obligatory and voluntary incentives for the more comprehensive SDG 2 and more special SDG 12 disclosure by agriculture companies in both countries.

Acknowledgments

Alex Plastun gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0121U100473).

Inna Makarenko and Artem Rudychenko are grateful to the Czech government for the support provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, which allowed this scientific cooperation to start within the project "AgriSciences Platform for Scientific Enhancement of HEIs in Ukraine".

Corresponding authors

Inna Makarenko, Doctor of Economics, Associate Professor,

School of Business, Prague City University, Polská 10, 120 00 Praha 2 - Vinohrady, Czech Republic, and Accounting and Taxation Department, Sumy State University, 2, Rymskogo-Korsakova st., 40007 Sumy, Ukraine

Phone: [phone], E-mail: [email protected]

Sidebar

Makarenko, I., Plastun, A., Kozmenko, S., Kozmenko, O. and Rudychenko, A. (2022) "Corporate Transparency, Sustainable Development and SDG 2 and 12 in Agriculture: The Case of Ukraine", AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 57-70. ISSN 1804-1930. DOI 10.7160/aol.2022.140305.

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