Sustainable Food Laboratory

By Daniella Malin, February 21, 2008

As the Food Lab delves more deeply into the nexus between business and the sustainable development needs of rural agricultural communities in a variety of regions, Catholic Relief Services has emerged as a key new partner.

For Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a deeper involvement with the Sustainable Food Lab represents the opportunity to learn more about the private sector and improve on the ways that the agency works with the private sector to help poor communities out of poverty.

Michael Sheridan is the Regional Technical Advisor for Sustainable Livelihoods in Latin America and Caribbean Region with CRS. After the Oxfam Learning Journey last October, a colleague told him that within the first five minutes of one of their visits, a corporate participant asked questions that provided a whole new perspective on the work they had been doing for the past five years.

“As market integration advances it becomes more and more critical to incorporate those [corporate] disciplines and perspectives,” Sheridan said. “If we want to accompany small-holders and help them compete in mainstream food systems, we have to understand them, not just academically but from the perspectives of the people who are shaping them.”

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) delivers emergency relief and long-term development services throughout the globe and has been increasingly working with the private sector to help achieve some of their sustainable development goals. The agency’s relatively new focus, not just on on-farm issues (increasing yields, helping to develop farmer groups) but also on markets, has been working well mostly at the local and regional level. The Food Lab represents an opportunity for CRS to expand this work to international markets and larger buyers both through potential sales contracts and through knowledge building.

Shaun Ferris is Senior Technical Advisor for Agriculture and the Environment.

“We hope that by being part of the Food Lab, we will generate $5-$10 or $20 million worth of market linkage opportunities for the smallholder producers whom we serve. It has to come down to that,” he said. “But we also hope to develop new business models and use those to encourage more smallholders to increase their trade in higher value more formalized markets,” Ferris said.

Catholic Relief Services is a direct partner with the Food Lab in the project, New Business Models for Sustainable Trading Relationships and conversations are in process about their involvement in additional projects that are currently in more formative stages.

With a presence in 98 countries and connections to networks of other practitioners, Catholic Relief Services brings to the Food Lab both its own expertise and resources and a powerful platform through which to share lessons with others and match private sector and community-based needs.

For their part, CRS staff consider their involvement in the Food Lab an opportunity to learn about ways to be more effective in working with the private sector.

“We wanted to get more involved with the Food Lab as an entry point to talk to large corporate buyers to gain a better understanding from them about the essential buying conditions for small-holders to link to larger buyers,” Ferris said.

It works from both ends though. The conversation helps bring farmers towards markets but Ferris hopes the larger buyers also gain a better understanding of the constraints that smallholders have.

Sheridan said that ever since he attended the Food Lab meeting in October he has been advocating internally that CRS become more involved. He was impressed by what he saw there.

“Being invited into a space where such a diverse gathering of organizations were able to speak freely about their perspectives on sustainability, their challenges and conflicts, was amazing,” he said. “I’d never seen the breadth of organizations, going way up and way down the food chain to the small-holder coops, all in one place like that.”

The scope of businesses and depth of involvement was also impressed him. Sheridan said it has been relatively easy for CRS to find common ground with business partners in the progressive, fair trade network that he described as mostly small businesses that occupy one end of the sustainability spectrum.

“It was a real eye opener for me to see the kind of companies there, the SYSCO’s and Unilever’s of the world, really engaging in these seminal issues."

He noted that as a development agency, CRS speaks a different language than the corporate partners represented at the meeting and use different metrics but that didn’t stop them from looking for common ground.

“‘Integral human development’ is our north star. That bottom line is not the company’s bottom line. What spells ultimate success for us is not what spells success for them but we’re working through the same kinds of supply chains and this is a point of encounter. To see that people were engaging in ways that were respectful and really looking for win-win solutions was exciting.”

Catholic Relief Services was established by the Roman Catholic Bishops in 1943 to help war-torn Europe recover from the great conflict of WWII and then expanded its work to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Throughout this 65 year history the organization has continued to both provide relief in emergency situations and work to break the cycle of poverty through community-based initiatives including agricultural initiatives, microfinance, community banks, health education, clean water projects.

Both the emergency relief and long-term development activities that Catholic Relief Services deliver are based on a holistic approach that focuses on addressing the root causes of conflict, chronic hunger and poverty. This fits with the Food Lab’s focus on long-term solutions and on creating a food system that meets the needs of the present while regenerating the capacity to meet the needs of the future. The Food Lab is founded on the belief that the way to achieve this is by reaching across traditional divides, a proposition that resonates for Sheridan.

“I believe that this [Food Lab] space can lead to convergence and collaboration and that in the absence of this space, that’s not going to happen. It’s an evolutionary process but if people don’t come together they won’t have their visions clash and soften and clash and soften and move towards convergence so that engagement is mutually beneficial,” Sheridan said. He continued. “this isn’t just about mutual benefit, it’s the only possibility for moving forward.”