Sustainable Food Laboratory

Food Lab member Marcelo Vieira gave a presentation at the Global Feed and Food II Congress in Brazil in April titled, "Accelerating the Sustainable Food Trend: from Niche to Mainstream." In it he called for a simplification of the certification process.

If quality food is going to be mainstream, codes of conduct (social, agricultural and environmental) need to be reduced to the 8-10 items that most likely account for 80 percent of the impact of production, he argued.

Vieira told the roundtable audience that the Food Lab's Responsible Commodities Initiative set out to streamline sustainability standards so they could be delivered at scale, without added cost, across a range of commodities in mainstream markets. He said the industry must

• focus on a small set of the most important indicators of sustainability (e.g. soil carbon, water use, habitat conversion, greenhouse gas emissions) rather than an exhaustive list,
  
• measure results on those indicators in order to demonstrate results,
  
• set targets rather than procedural requirements in order to unleash creativity and resourcefulness of producers,
  
• look for, propagate and continually improve better management practices that save producers money while improving environmental and social performance.
  

About 50 people attended this discussion. Vieira presented Rabobank Brazil's new social and environmental policy as an excellent example and ended with a call to commodity growers saying, "Sustainability standards will be a growing requirement and a good reference for responsible growers. Let’s be proactive and help design them!"

Vieira circulated the guidelines developed by Rabobank Brazil and received endorsement from other Food Lab Responsible Commodities Team members to use them as a starting point and work with Rabobank to adapt the institution's social and environmental policy for wider application. A follow up meeting with Rabobank and Imaflora, a Rainforest Alliance partner in Brazil, is scheduled for June 14.