The Dacsa Group supply chain for sustainable corn

The Argentine Flint corn supply chain, to produce flaking grits, has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, in order to guarantee the high standards of quality, food safety and traceability that are demanded today by our customers and consumers. Today, all the Flint corn imported from Argentina by Dacsa Group is produced under a preserved identity system, which means that at Dacsa Group we select from seeds and farmers through the rest of the supply chain. This allows us to track the identity of the corn throughout the process until delivery to the customer. In addition, the Flint corn produced by us in Argentina is certified as non-GMO and conforms to all European legislation on food safety.

The involvement of Dacsa in the development of this supply chain has led us to collaborate with institutions such as the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences of Rosario, INTA (National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina) and associations such as Maizar and other official and private organizations. All this work has allowed us to promote the cultivation of this type of special corn among the different ones that are made in Argentina.

Among the activities that have been carried out over the years, there are events such as the biannual seminar on corn cultivation attended by all the participants in the supply chain (seedbeds, farmers, traders, control companies …) During these seminars we present the latest agronomic trials, developing areas of the crop chain such as food security, sustainability, commercial information. These tasks have also been promoted by Dacsa Group, together with customers and suppliers, and have been published in some of the most prestigious scientific journals such as the European Journal of Agronomy or Field crops research. 

Along these lines, Dacsa Group has joined Kellogg’s sustainability strategy on its 2020 agenda and, as a result of this collaboration, the Flint corn supply chain for Kellogg has been certified as ‘responsibly sourced corn’. To this end, a third-party audit was carried out by a world-class control company. This has allowed Kellog to use the claim ‘responsibly sourced corn’ in which all the steps of the supply chain have been verified according to the criteria of that claim. The audit was successfully completed in December 2018. In this audit, specific actions have been reviewed in areas such as traceability, seed development, involvement with the producer, training in hygiene and safety of farmers, as well as our ethics and our sustainability.

At Dacsa Group we have been Kellogg suppliers of corn since the late 1980s, and, later, in rice and functional ingredients. Our specialisation in Flint corn from Argentina, allows us to produce the Flaking Grits, which are the fundamental ingredient for making the famous corn flakes breakfast cereal. This flint corn is considered to be one of the highest quality corns in the world for its nutritional and quality attributes.