May 2011 Newsletter

Welcome

The Sustainable Food Lab is a consortium of business, non-profit and public organizations working to accelerate the shift toward sustainability in the food system globally.

With this issue we welcome articles from Gord Kurbis, Pulse Canada and Andrew Arnold, SureHarvest.

Cool Farming Options: Sugar, Beans, Coffee and Egg Results

 

 
Detailed agricultural carbon quantification is a missing link in otherwise straightforward "Life Cycle Analyses" of food products. In the "Cool Farming Options" project (formerly known as the "Global Agriculture Climate Assessment") the Sustainable Food Lab is facilitating a coordinated look at 21 farming systems across the globe in partnership with 17 sponsoring organizations. Here are some highlights:

• In the last few weeks we have completed the first detailed assessments of Stonyfield's Paraguayan supply of sugar, one of the few systems in the world in which small-holder sugar producers are still in business (Brazilian sugar is next).  
• In Canada, the project has detailed agricultural carbon data from 36 pulse navy bean growers and is comparing the Cool Farm Tool with the Canada-specific Holos tool.
• In Kenya, the CFT was piloted with 24 small-scale coffee farmers representing a 16,000 member grower cooperative. This work is in concert with the development of the 4C Climate Module, with sponsorship of GIZ and Sangana Commodities.  
• Across the U.S. ten organic egg producers supplying Costco stores are using the Cool Farm Tool to model everything from the feed crop production and harvesting to the livestock, manure handling, energy and transport.  
• Staff have completed the first draft of a Spanish Cool Farm Tool and Users Guide.  
• Version 1.1 of the Cool Farm Tool will be released by June 1, 2011. 

More Metrics News

Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops

Revisions to the Energy metric are being reviewed by the working group and coordinating council. If these revisions meet with approval the Energy metric will be piloted more widely this year.

The GHG metric is moving forward with prototyping the metric as presented during a March 1st Stewardship Index webinar. This metric will utilize a computer simulator (DNDC) to provide growers with a GHG emissions figure, a rough indication of confidence associated with that figure and a set of modeled alternative management scenarios so that growers can see where their score falls relative to what may be achieved with management changes. A first version of the prototype is expected in June.

Measuring Sustainable Agriculture –
the alignment between farm and food industry sustainability priorities 

 Gord Kurbis,

A year later, Pulse Canada has reached out to opinion leaders and stakeholders across the food value chain to learn what they’re measuring and what they see as priorities.  Based on a series of 34 research interviews with some of the most influential companies and organizations leading the sustainability dialogue, their new report, Measuring Sustainable Agriculture, provides a current snapshot of how consumer marketing is likely to influence the industry, which organizations are leading the discussion, and how they will be measuring environmental sustainability in their agricultural supply chains.  The report also goes one step further by comparing and contrasting the food industry’s emerging sustainability priorities with the body of farm stewardship practices that have been adopted and continue to grow in Canada.  

The key messages that emerge are (a) the food industry shares much more common ground with primary agriculture than current popular opinion among farmers would suggest, and (b) farmers should therefore consider developing closer collaborations with the food industry.  Noting that farmers and the food industry are often out of each other’s line of sight in the commodity business, the report goes into detail on the surprising degree of alignment between the two.  

Measuring Sustainable Agriculture’s findings also suggest that current sustainability messaging to consumers will give way to an emerging body of evidence-based sustainability measurements. There is a strong degree of commercial momentum behind these efforts, which are almost entirely market-driven.  While there are technical measurement difficulties and data constraints to overcome, food industry leaders believe that enough is known to begin the process of building and implementing measurement systems.  

The leading organizations are focused on harmonizing measurement systems to avoid duplication and unnecessary cost, and to minimize confusion in future consumer messaging. The cornerstone of those efforts is life cycle analysis (LCA), which is the preferred analytical framework of the leading organizations. 

Four elements are emerging as the highest priorities for measuring environmental sustainability:

(a) greenhouse gas emissions

(b) impacts on water

(c) impacts on biodiversity

(d) indicators of soil health.

 Yield improvements will generally tend to be positive for environmental performance, although not always. Some indicators like greenhouse gas emissions are expected to be measured as emissions per unit of production, rather than per unit of land, but this approach is recognized as requiring much more thought when it comes to other indicators like soil loss and water use.  For annual crops, measurements are expected to focus on cropping systems rather than a single crop in a rotation.  There also has been a considerable shift toward integrating practice-based and outcome-based measurements – moving the focus of evaluations away from how something was grown, and moving towards measurement of physical impacts on the environment.  

Measuring Sustainable Agriculture, as well as its companion document, Measure What Matters (written for a generalist audience) can be found on Pulse Canada’s web site at www.pulsecanada.com/measurewhatmatters.

Processing Tomato 'Community' Comes together Around Cool Farm Tool

Members of the California processing tomato industry came together recently in Modesto, CA to hear about how the Cool Farm Tool (CFT) can be used to better understand on-farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  The meeting was sponsored by SFL member Heinz who buys tomato paste for their branded products from a number of the co-packers in California.  In the room were growers, representatives from the co-packer companies’ grower relations,  a seed company, an NGO, a researcher from UC Davis, and the heads of the California Tomato Growers Assn. and the California Tomato Research Institute.  This was a nearly complete representation of the tomato supply chain with the exception of retailers and food service providers!  

As part of its corporate sustainability mission, Heinz is “addressing climate change from the ground up” and looking to reduce the carbon footprint of its supply chain.  Heinz conducts numerous education and outreach activities to growers who are critical in helping address the agricultural link in the chain.  As part of that effort, growers were given a CFT overview and asked to provide feedback on its usability and value to their operations.  

Feedback was generally positive in terms of the types of data needed to run the CFT model and the immediate results in terms of changes to per acre and per ton CO2 emission changes based upon changing some practices like fertilizer types, equipment passes, and tillage styles.  Certain items for improvement were noted like having more fertilizers to pick from, incorporating input costs, and seeing the impact of crop rotation selections. 

Growers noted that one of the challenges for the CFT is that there are varying levels of sophistication in crop record keeping and the ability to get some of the CFT data input elements – fertilizers, electricity, and equipment fuel.  There were also concerns with the additional costs to collect some of the data at the field level. 

Growers are faced with a balancing act between the economic realities of the annual business cycle of growing row crops and addressing the longer term environmental cycles. Input usage is carefully watched from cost and yield optimization perspectives.  

The overall feedback from the growers was consistent with what was learned in the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops 2010 pilot where 35 growers of 16 crops in 8 states collected data for a number of sustainability metrics including water, nutrients, energy and biodiversity.  

To sufficiently benefit growers there need to be tangible benefits to them for collecting and reporting the data.  One grower stated that one benefit may be having the data help “tell the story of the California tomato industry” at time when growers feel increasing regulatory pressure.  

The bottom line at the meeting was that the Cool Farm Tool is a good start for looking at inputs and practices that affect GHG emissions on the farm.  Additional improvements to the software to address tomato growing specifics were discussed.  

As supply chain-wide discussions of sustainability continue in the hope that true value chains can be formed, the question of the day was – how do all members of the processing tomato “community” benefit from measuring and managing sustainability metrics in their operations?  The discussion continues…

 

 New Linking Worlds Website: Cases, Tools and Inspiration for Inclusive Supply Chains  

The Body Shop has adapted to the needs of small scale producers in their supply chains by increasing stability in their buying approach (fair pricing, forecasting, and predictable demand) and supporting capacity building. Sodexho Madagascar has developed local supply chains to supply remote mines through local partnerships.  Small-scale outdoor flower producers in Kenya have learned that they can sell directly to the retail market in the UK, but that investments in product innovation and responsive customer management capacity are critical to success.  These are among the many stories and lessons shared in a new web site, www.linkingworlds.org.

The Sustainable Food Lab -- on behalf of the New Business Models for Sustainable Trading Relationships Project, and with support from the Unilever Oxfam partnership on smallholder sourcing-- is pleased to announce the launch of a new web based learning platform to support companies and non-profits that are working on supply chains that are inclusive of small scale producers in developing countries.  Oxfam, the Sustainable Food Lab, IIED, CIAT, Rainforest Alliance, Catholic Relief Services and others have been working in partnership with companies over the last four years to create sourcing arrangements that meet stringent supply chain criteria and deliver development benefits such as more stable trading relationships, income and improved food security.  

This work has generated a wealth of stories and lessons for connecting farmers to markets in ways that reduce poverty while at the same time offering companies a chance to diversify their supply base and appeal to ethically-motivated consumers.  In addition to successes, these projects have illuminated challenges and barriers that arise when linking the worlds of diverse and fragmented small-scale farmers with the needs of modern supply chains.  These experiences have highlighted the importance of understanding the market systems of the crop and analyzing the investments needed for smallholders to participate. In addition, understanding the opportunities and constraints in the household system and ecosystem simultaneously enables the identification of strategies to support marginalized producers to “step in” and “step up” within the market system.

The Linking Worlds website is a resource for practitioners and researchers who are taking on these challenges.  It facilitates the sharing of experiences and “new business models” through research papers, case studies, tools, impact studies, and descriptions of active “action-learning” projects.  This set of resources is a starting point to share what we are learning, and we aim to add tools and cases that further enrich the site over the years ahead.

Please visit www.linkingworlds.org 

Coffee and Cocoa are like Fish 

We can’t figure out what to do about these challenges by finding someone to blame. Just as no single fisherman wants to catch the last fish, no organization in agriculture wants to use up the last water or ton of fertilizer. No farmer wants to deplete topsoil. The whole system, however, generates unintended consequences: the so-called “race to the bottom.”  

Luckily, we’re also in the midst of a race to the top: hundreds of sustainable supply chain initiatives, thousands of community projects, dozens of labels, new outcome metrics systems, and very promising multi-stakeholder commodity roundtables to create standards. Agriculture can reduce emissions, sequester carbon, build soil, and use water much more efficiently.  

What will it take for these initiatives to become sufficiently lasting and scalable to enable us to collectively manage future supply challenges? Can business find the strategic value in long-term growth and profit, even if the payback is not in the short term? Can governments act beyond the next election cycle?  

These are among the questions for deliberation in Portland in June. Our initiatives need practical tools to calibrate progress in ways that are useful for management. Our organizations need better actuarial capacities to calibrate long-term necessities against short-term costs.  

Ironically, if agriculture is like fishing, we can be quite hopeful. When fisheries are managed for the future, breeding stock populations build, and yield increases. When farming is managed for the future, soil is healthier, carbon is pulled out of the atmosphere and held as soil organic matter, more water is retained, and yields increase.  When our organizations are managed for the future they might also be healthier.

See you in Portland and beyond,

Hal

New Member Welcome

Aramark

Conservation International

Mendoza School of Business at Notre Dame

Oxfam America

Root Capital

Ruby Tuesday

Scientific Certification Systems