Sustainable Food Laboratory

December 11, 2007

The Board Room at General Mills is usually home to meetings for General Mills managers but early this month leaders from 15 companies gathered around the long hardwood table. They came together to further progress on mainstreaming sustainability.

The Sustainable Food Lab’s Business Coalition met December 7 in Minneapolis, at the headquarters of General Mills. The Coalition’s “Call to Action” is its organizing charter. It opens, “we, business leaders of global food and agriculture, recognize that we influence the way one quarter of the world’s population earns a living, half the world’s habitable land is cared for, and two-thirds of the world’s fresh water is used. With such influence comes opportunity and responsibility.”

The meeting, attended by 33 people, was an opportunity for members to examine the details of the industry footprint in more depth and build collective intelligence about how to respond. Kim Brown from US FoodService said, “This group makes us more intelligent and more thoughtful.” Her colleague Rachel Sylvan added, “The Food Lab makes clear that we’re all part of a larger movement.”

Gene Kahn, General Mills Sustainability Officer presented fresh data in his keynote presentation to the group. He said agriculture accounts for 83% of fresh water use and 8.34% of the GHG emissions in the United States (primarily from soil management). He touched on short-term opportunities to reduce solid waste and long-term needs to address water and carbon issues at the farm level. Gene told the group that every 10 pounds of food produces one pound of food waste and 3 pounds of packaging and other solid waste. And he cautioned that change will be very difficult.

“Agriculture is the least capable part of the chain at making a major shift without the rest of the chain owning the total picture. Little change will occur if we don’t move beyond our own boundaries,” he said.

Bob Gray, CEO of Duda, a large produce supplier, agreed saying that for farmers to tackle the big issues—soil management, nitrous oxide emissions, energy use, and water shortages—a nudge was needed from down the chain.

The list of collaborative initiatives that members discussed matched the long list of challenges. Packaging was high on the list. Craig Watson of SYSCO urged a collaborative water project, to work with suppliers on reducing pollution of the Chesapeake Bay. John Domino of SuperValu suggested the development of common metrics to score sustainability improvements, both internally and through supply chains. Regional food procurement and distribution was high on the list of goals for CH Robinson. Both Bud Floyd and JD Grubb, of CH Robinson said that they have a few pilots working, slowly gaining credibility in the organization and with customers.

“We’ve gone from 0 to 60 pretty quickly,” JD Grubb said.

Other participants shared their company level progress. Dennis Macray from Starbucks described their enormous investment in sustainability standards, one that has shaped how 10% of the world’s coffee is produced, even though Starbucks only purchases 3%.

Even as industry leaders gather to find a response to sustainability challenges, other initiatives are also cropping up. Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), the third party certifier that audits and verifies many industry sustainability claims, has launched the development of a national sustainable agriculture standard. They filed their first draft with the American National Standards Institute in April, 2007 and are holding a series of open meetings to enable stakeholders to help shape the standard. Linda Brown from SCS was present and encouraged Sustainable Food Lab Business Coalition members to participate in the development of the national sustainable agriculture standard.

Business Coalition members have a lot ahead of them but seem ready for the challenge. Jennifer Aspen from Unilever said, “The time is ripe for what we’re doing here. Our employees are eager, and so are our customers.”