Sustainable Food Laboratory

Poverty Meets the Market

It was during the bumpy bus rides between rural Honduran farms and over the mountains to Guatemala that the fourteen passengers of the Oxfam Learning Journey got past the formalities with each other.  It was then, while bouncing and lurching over potholes and getting stuck (and unstuck) in muddy roads, that business savvy met community-based development expertise, that intimate knowledge of the volume and scale of multi-national food companies met with the market access needs of rural communities.

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Newsletter Archive

What Does Public Food Service Have to do with Rural Landscapes?

About 120 public food service managers, staff, and farmers from 10 European countries, and North America gathered in Seville, Spain last month to talk about the details of school meal reform. These participants spoke different languages and came from different cultures but they held one challenge in common: advancing sustainable rural development through public and institutional food service.

SFL Calendar

A Leadership Lab in China, April 7-17, 2008 (contact: Daniella Malin)

Value Chain Clinic, June 11-13, 2008 (contact Chris Landry)

Sustainable Food Lab Summit, September 23-26, 2008, California

Business Coalition Meeting, November, 2008

Transatlantic "Big Cities" Network, focus on city region sustainable food strategies, Spring 2009 (contact Clive Peckham)

USFoodservice Employees Study Sustainability

Top managers at U.S. Foodservice are rapidly pulling together a sustainability strategy. Food Lab staff facilitated a kickoff event in September, an intensive introductory session on how social and environmental trends are shaping the food business and what they can do about it. 

SAI Platform Takes a Proactive Approach

Food industry representatives from throughout Europe gathered in Brussels last month for a conference on sustainable agriculture put on by the Sustainable Agriculture initiative (SAI) PLatform and the Confederation of the Food & Drink Industries of the EU (CIAA).

Food Lab Business Members Reach Across Typical Boundaries

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

Related Events

GMA Environmental Sustainability Summit / 17-18 January 2008 / Washington D.C. 

Food Marketing Institute Sustainability Summit / 16-18 June / Minneapolis, MN 

BioMarine - The World Marine Initiative, October 19-24, 2008, Marseille, France