About Us

Our Governance

The ProTerra Foundation is legally registered in the Netherlands as a Foundation (Stichting).

Companies sharing its vision and the mission can join the ProTerra Network™ and support the organisation by sharing their good practices and providing strategic advice.

The daily business of the ProTerra Foundation is managed by its Secretariat and directly supervised by the Board of Directors. Besides, the ProTerra Foundation has set the Stakeholder Council as its advisory body.

Secretariat

The daily business of the ProTerra Foundation is managed by its Secretariat and directly supervised by the Board of Directors.

Emese van Maanen

Emese is the Managing Director of the ProTerra Foundation and holds responsibility for the day to day running of the company and its strategic direction.

Alexia Stumpf

Alexia organizes the administrative duties of the ProTerra Foundation.

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is composed by individual professionals with proven experience in sustainability and food and feed supply chains. They supervise the work of the Secretariat and lead the organisation towards its vision and mission.

Augusto Freire

ProTerra Foundation, Chairman of the Board of Directors, CEO of Value Chain Consulting – sustainability monitoring, reporting and verification, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Cesar Borges de Sousa

Cesar Borges de Sousa is the advisor of Caramuru Alimentos, one of the largest domestically owned grain processing company in the country. With industrial and service ventures spread across Amapá, Goiás, Pará, Paraná, Mato Grosso, and São Paulo, he plays a crucial role in the leadership and strategy of this renowned organization.

In addition to his experience in the private sector, Cesar Borges de Sousa has a solid academic background, specializing in Financial Administration from Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo.

His influence and experience extend beyond the company’s boundaries, actively participating in important institutions such as: Instituto Soja Livre, Advisory Board of the World Trade Center São Paulo, Fórum do Futuro, Agribusiness Council (COSAG) of the São Paulo State Federation of Industries (FIESP), Permanent Infrastructure Thematic Council (COINFRA) of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI).

Jochen Koester

Jochen Koester is managing director of AgroTrace, a Geneva-based classical broker firm serving the global trade of GMO-free agricultural raw materials and non-perishables. Since 1998, he has been intensively involved in non-GMO production, certification, analytics, distribution and the relevant legal regulations – especially during his many years of professional experience abroad, especially in the U.S.A. and in Brazil. He is well connected in these two and in other important leading countries of raw materials and an expert of the soybean industries also in India and Canada.

A ProTerra Board member since 2012 and a fully qualified lawyer, he has been involved in the evolution of sustainable and responsible soy production since the late 1990s. He is a co-founder of VLOG in Germany and served on that Board for ten years from its inception in 2010 when he shifted to VLOG’s Advisory Council.

Trygve Berg Lea

Mr. Lea graduated from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 1981.

After that he has worked in the aquaculture industry, primarily with aquaculture feed development. He has worked with the feed company Skretting with product development and later as sustainability manager. He has also participated in developing and maintaining the GlobalGAP and Aquaculture Stewardship farm and feed standards. Mr. Lea also has served on the board of the MarinTrust standard programme. Today Mr. Lea serves a senior advisor in a certification body that works with certification of seafood related standards.

His field of interest is especially in responsible sourcing of feed raw materials and how this efficiently can be implemented through the development of private standards and official regulations.

Willem Piet van den Berg

Board Member
Atlas specialist; researcher and trainer
Maasland, The Netherlands

Stakeholders Council

The Stakeholders Council is the governance body with strategic advisory role. It provides both the Board of Directors and the Secretariat with recommendations and expert advice on specific topics that help companies to embed their sustainability strategies and give consumers assurance of their work done through the implementation of the ProTerra Standard in the food and feed supply chain.

Anna Fangmann

Dr. Anna Fangmann works in the field of sustainable procurement at MEGA Tierernaehrung GmbH & Co.KG. She started in December 2022. In this position, she closely works together with the sustainability team of the PHW-Group. The company MEGA Tierernaehrung GmbH & Co. KG is part of the PHW-Group, which is a group of innovative companies that cooperate in the segments of poultry specialities and poultry production.

Anna holds a MSc degree in agriculture and a doctor degree in animal genetics from the University of Goettingen. Before, she worked as a project manager at the Center of Sustainability Transformation in Areas of Intensive Agriculture hosted at the University of Vechta, managing the EU-LEADER-funded project “Dynamic agri-food systems” for a specific region of Lower Saxony – Germany.

MEGA Tierernaehrung is one of the largest poultry feed producers in Germany and belongs to the PHW Group, a third-generation family business. Responsible action and sustainable corporate management are the basis for ensuring that the next generations also have the opportunity to continue and develop the company. Sustainability is therefore lived with the deepest conviction both internally and externally in the PHW Group: a sustainability council was founded as long as 13 years ago and since 2010 the group of companies has been a partner and sponsor of the Centre for Sustainable Leadership (ZNU) at the University of Witten/Herdecke. All German production sites for chicken, turkey and sausage products and the PHW headquarters, as well as a site in the Netherlands, have been successively audited and certified according to the holistic ZNU standard “Sustainable Management” since 2012.

MEGA Tierernaehrung GmbH & Co.KG has also been dealing with the topic of sustainable development for a long time. Since 2014, we are happy to be actively involved in the multi-stakeholder dialogue of ProTerra standard. As the first compound feed manufacturer worldwide, we received the certification for sustainable poultry feed (GMP+ Feed Responsibility Assurance) in 2015.

With regard to animal welfare and health, we generally prioritize the responsible use of all available raw materials with a distinct focus on sustainability. To emphasize our commitment, we already guarantee deforestation-free supply chains for our compound feed in relation to the raw materials soya and palm oil for poultry bred in Germany from the second quarter of 2022.

Eric Olav Gracey

Erik Olav Gracey is a Sustainability Specialist at BioMar (Aarhus, Denmark). BioMar is a world leader in aquaculture feeds, with operations in Europe, Asia, South and Central America and Australia. Erik brings Life Cycle Assessment and other environmental impact assessment competency to the ProTerra Stakeholder Council. At BioMar, Erik works with fish and shrimp farmers to reduce their environmental footprints through Supply Chain sustainability optimization. This work requires in-depth knowledge of the environmental and social impacts of different global commodities. Importantly, BioMar is leading several projects to improve the geospatial resolution of “hotspot” environmental impacts related to agricultural/marine commodities, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, freshwater consumption, and phosphorus depletion, amongst others. As an avid outdoorsman and humanist, Erik is passionate about using the best available science to balance human development with natural ecosystem requirements. Erik holds a B.A. in International Business from Pacific Lutheran University, an A.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from Bellevue College, and an MSc in Industrial Ecology (Environmental Systems Analysis) from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Job van Mil

Job van Mil, Nutreco’s Supplier Sustainability Manager.

Job collaborates with the feed supply chain to reduce scope 3 emissions and ensure due diligence requirements are met. One of the topics Job is heavily involved in is Nutreco’s deforestation free commitment, serving as one of Nutreco’s experts on the topic.

Jorge Diaz Salinas

Jorge is the Brand Director at Skretting. In this role, he works together with Skretting’s offices in the world to fulfil our mission of “Feeding the Future” and our ambition to be the leading partner in driving the journey towards an even more sustainable aquaculture industry. Before joining Skretting’s global team in 2018, Jorge worked for three years in Skretting Chile.

Jorge holds an MSc in International Marketing from King’s College London and a Certificate in Corporate Sustainability from New York University.

Julia Clark

Julia has always believed that business can be a force for good. Throughout her career she has sought to harness the positive impact of business as a platform for growth. She launched the biggest ever commitment, at the time, to Fairtrade in testament to that belief.

She is now working to move Europe’s largest cane refiner to fully sustainable supply. In her role as ASR Group Europe, Director of Sugar Ethics, Julia is responsible for developing, implementing and continuously improving a sustainability strategy which balances sustainability outcomes with risk management and commercial needs across the raw sugar supply chain for three cane sugar refineries, Tate & Lyle Sugars, Sidul Acucares and SRB. She works closely with the trading desk to manage the risks associated with C900,000 tonnes of raw sugar from suppliers in 18 countries and with sales to ensure we understand and meet the needs of customers.

Julia joined Tate & Lyle sugars in 2004 as Head of Marketing, having worked previously in marketing roles at Dairy Crest and Nestle.

Juliana Lopes

Sustainability Communications and Compliance Board Born in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Juliana de Lavor Lopes is currently responsible for AMAGGI’s Sustainability, Communications and Compliance Board.

She is also an executive at the André and Lucia Maggi Foundation, the institution responsible for the company’s Private Social Investment. Juliana joined AMAGGI in January 2006 as a Social Development Coordinator. In 2009 she was promoted to a managerial position. In 2013, she took over AMAGGI’s recently created Sustainability Board. A proof of the company’s commitment to sustainable development and also of the confidence in Juliana’s work. In 2016, she also took on a leading role at AMAGGI’s Corporate Communications department. By the end of 2017, Juliana took over the new AMAGGI’s Compliance Directorship. She holds a degree in International Relations from the Estácio de Sá University, an MBE (Master Business Economics) in Social Responsibility and the Third Sector from UFRJ, an MBA in Corporate Communication from UNESA/RJ, a Specialization in Sustainability Leadership from Berkeley University in California, and a Specialization in Leadership and Learning for Sustainability from the Organizational Learning Society founded by Peter Senge. Her team was responsible for some of the company’s most important achievements, such as the ProTerra and the Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS) certifications, as well as the Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD) recognition. Juliana also represented AMAGGI throughout the process of elaborating the Business Principles for Food and Agriculture in the UN Global Compact and is currently a coordinator at the UN’s Brazilian Global Compact, Food and Agriculture Thematic Group (GT).

Pamela Moreira

Pamela Moreira is a Production Engineer with an MBA in Project Management. She has over 15 years of experience in Agribusiness, almost 12 of them at Bunge, in roles across Logistics, Origination and Sustainability. Currently, as the South America Sustainability Senior Manager, she is leading the climate action agenda in the region to meet Bunge’s commitment to deforestation-free chains and deliver low carbon products.

Sandra Schouten – Kraaij

Sustainability manager Cefetra B.V.

Sandra Schouten – Kraaij is Sustainability manager & EHS coordinator at Cefetra B.V. (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). Cefetra B.V. is part of the business unit Cefetra Group B.V.. All entities within the group provide about 20 million tons of agricultural ingredients to our customers in Europe and beyond on a yearly basis.

Cefetra plays a leading role in the implementation of certified responsible soya for the European feed Industry. For the last years I have worked together with other stakeholders in the soy supply chain to promote responsible production. We have been able to grow our responsible soy certification program in South America, with projects in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Taylor Voorhees

Taylor Voorhees is Sustainability Leader for Cargill Animal Nutrition & Health.

He joined Cargill in 2022 after nearly seven years as senior aquaculture scientist and global aquaculture initiatives manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program. He co-authored Seafood Watch’s aquaculture sustainability standard and was technical lead on sustainability assessments, gaining insight and connection into dozens of aquaculture industries around the world. Beyond this, he developed and delivered sustainability improvement initiatives in the shrimp and salmon industries, with particular focus on Vietnam, India, and Chile.

Previously, he held several commercially-focused research roles in the US and the Bahamas in finfish larval rearing and offshore growout, fish nutrition, and aquaculture engineering. He built a land-based tuna aquaculture facility and successfully captured, live-transported, held, and spawned yellowfin tuna and mahi-mahi. Upon the emergence of a unique and uncharacterized tuna disease, its epidemiology became the subject of his graduate work. Taylor holds BSc and MSc degrees in aquaculture from the University of Rhode Island.

Sonja Frommenwiler

Sonja Frommenwiler currently works as a Sustainability Manager EMEA for Barry Callebaut Group, a global Chocolate and Cocoa Manufacturer headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. In her current role she is responsible for the sust. sourcing of all Ingredients except Cocoa, incl Sugar, Dairy, Oils (Soy) among others.

Sonja Frommenwiler holds a Master of Science in International Management and enjoys hiking and skiing.

Standards and Certification Committee

A vital element to ensure the robustness of the ProTerra certification programme is the Standards and Certification Committee which is responsible, among others, for the periodical revision and updating of the ProTerra Standard, the monitoring of certification bodies, the proper implementation of the ProTerra Certification scheme and the correct handling of complaints related to the implementation of the ProTerra Certification scheme.

Income sources

The ProTerra Foundation finances its activities through memberships, volume fees and training.