This report, produced by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), provides guidance to Mexican and foreign institutional investors on how to use active ownership and shareholder engagement to address SDG-related impacts in Mexico’s food sector. It identifies priority sustainability issues in the sector, influential companies to engage with, and practical recommendations grounded in international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

• Key SDG-related issues in Mexico’s food sector include water access, labor rights (especially for migrant and Indigenous workers), biodiversity loss, corporate political influence, threats to human rights defenders, and the health impacts of sugary beverages.
• The report identifies a list of influential and potentially responsive food sector companies — both public and private, Mexican and foreign — and benchmarks them against leading SDG-related tools including the WBA Food & Agriculture Benchmark, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, KnowTheChain, and SBTi targets.
• It reviews Mexico’s sustainable investing landscape, including relevant legal provisions for listed companies and pension funds (AFOREs), sustainable taxonomy, and ESG bond market developments.
• Recommendations for investors emphasize collaborative engagement, issue prioritization based on severity of negative impacts, engagement with foreign parent companies where direct leverage is limited, and grounding engagements in civil society expertise and SDG-aligned standards.