Sustainable Food Laboratory

The Food Lab Summit, the week of September 22 in California is shaping up to be a very exciting event. New partnerships, ideas and plans are emerging daily to ensure that the event will be an experience-rich study for us all in how mainstream food systems are approaching the greatest challenges of our time. The Summit is being organized with a California consortium called Roots of Change.

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Palm oil is the most ubiquitous edible oil in the world and the first agricultural commodity to come out of the multi-stakeholder roundtable process. As a result of this process a new product will be available for large scale procurement and trade starting in the second half of this year for: sustainable palm oil certified to a global sustainability standard that over 200 organizations agreed on. These organizations together represent 40 percent of global trade in palm oil. Here's the story...

SFL Calendar

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

Business Coalition Meeting, November or December, 2008

Food and Agriculture Summit, Global Challenges and Responsibilities, co-sponsored by the Sustainable Food Lab, SAI Platform, and the Keystone Center’s Creating Sustainable Outcomes for Agriculture Initiative – Washington DC, Spring 2009

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

The Food Lab has recently received a grant from the Ford Foundation to study the food "value chain" approach to poverty alleviation and better management of basic resources (soil, air, water, climate, biodiversity). The experience and ongoing initiatives of Food Lab members and beyond form the basis of this investigation into when improvements in food supply chains lead to permanent wealth creation in source communities. This research will help Ford develop a new approach to rural development. Read more...

The Ford Foundation and Food Lab are not alone in finding traction with value chain work. Increasingly, people are turning to food company value chains to help with the challenges of wealth distribution and better resource management. The FAO also recently took a bold step in this direction with the completion of a paper comparing the standards based approach to the value chain innovation approach. See our blog entry about this.

In partnership with SAI Platform, the Sustainable Food Lab has launched an online geographic mapping tool of sustainable agriculture and healthy value chain initiatives. This tool is still very much in development but we welcome your submissions of new projects. Questions and comments also welcome.

In the course of certifying products in agriculture, forestry and tourism in countries around the world, staff at Rainforest Alliance started noticing a wide variety of government-led incentives for sustainable production practices, but not all of them were helpful. Rainforest Alliance and partners decided to get a better sense of what works by surveying and compiling an inventory of useful legislation that they and others can use to promote successful incentives to government and producers. Read more...

Kai Robertson of WWF, Gene Kahn of General Mills, and Food Lab Staff member Karen Karp are speaking at the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) Food Sustainability Summit, June 16-18, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN on sourcing sustainable product and sustainable value chains.  The summit focus is on “practices and strategies that promote the long term well-being of the environment, society and the bottom line.” Carter Roberts, World Wildlife Fund president and CEO will keynote on how to use the market to fight climate change and resource exhaustion. Food Marketing Institute (FMI) serves its 1,500 member companies — food retailers and wholesalers — with research, education and industry relations. 

The guide to good food that we published in March, The Changing Vocabulary of Food Purchasing, has now sold over 10,000 copies food retailers, distributors and food service companies. Maurizio Mariani of Sotral in Italy said, "Many thanks and my best compliment to the workgroup  of "Business Coalition of SFL" and to Karen, John, Susan and Shayna. This is a great step to disseminate the culture of "Sustainability" in the Food Service Business."  You can download the booklet from our website or order some through our order form.

In other news:

Peter Senge, long time friend and colleague and author of the The Fifth Discipline and other bestselling books, has come out with a new book, The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations Ae Working Together to Create a Sustainable World. The book reveals the revolution already underway in companies around the world creating an alternative to "business as usual" tactics. The Food Lab is featured repeatedly throughout the book, as one of the epicenters of innovation helping to move this revolution forward.

Miguel Gamboa, who helped organize one of the Food Lab learning journeys in Guatemala in 2007, has invited Food Lab members and partners to compete in Progresso Network's  Cup of Excellent Experiences competition. Deadline for submission is June 30, 2008.  Progresso Network is looking for interesting experiences in capacity building for producer organizations that others, worldwide, can learn from. Winners will be rewarded with publicity and promotional material. The top winner will receive $7,500.

And Roberta Sonnino, another Food Lab colleague, has a new book coming out soon, The School Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development. This book focuses on that nexus of healthy eating, environmental sustainability and rural economic development that school food can occupy.

Related Events

Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) just released a new report on the initiatives taken by over a hundred U.S. hospitals to source healthier and more sustainably produced food for patients. The Healthy Food in Health Care report details actions taken by 127 facilities in 21 states.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) recently published a paper on, Trading Practices for a Sustainable Coffee Sector, Context, Strategies and Recommendations for Action by Jason Potts and others. Abstract: The past decade has given rise to a growing number of voluntary standards for sustainable agriculture production. The coffee sector has proven to be one of the most vibrant and dynamic commodity sectors for standards development during this period, with standards being designed to serve distinct specialty and mainstream markets. For the most part, sustainability standards in the coffee sector have focused on specifying criteria for “sustainable production”— and yet, it is widely recognized that many of the greatest challenges facing the sustainability of the sector as a whole, and smaller producers in particular, are related to the sustainability of the trading relationships between producers and buyers in international markets. This paper, one of the first of its kind, takes a detailed look at the issues and range of options available for the integration of “sustainable trading practices” within existing coffee supply chains.

The Green Supply Chain Summit 2008, June 24-25,  2008, Regent's Park Marriott, London, UK. Ethical Corporation. The Bottom Line: Greening your chain is not an act of sentimentality. It is pure good business. Hear from Vice Presidents from Unilever, Philips and Kodak. This conference promises to go beyond carbon footprint, covering other issues including water and energy efficiency, and management of toxic chemicals

One Planet Leaders, Autumn Sep-Nov 2008, Buckinghamshire, UK. WWF International. One Planet Leaders is a sustainability programme which enables business managers and senior executives to explore, challenge and apply the latest thinking on sustainable business practice. Registration deadline is July 15,  2008. WWF International brings you an applied sustainability programme for business leaders who want to make dramatic progress in building sustainability into their business models.