California produces the majority of the world’s almonds, with nearly 1.53 million acres dedicated to almond orchards. However, less than 20,000 of those acres are bee-friendly verified with pollinator habitat and reduced pesticide use.
As bees and other important pollinator populations decline sharply, it is imperative to change the trajectory of pollinator and biodiversity loss in key agricultural landscapes — and one food company is launching an effort to do just that. Read More
COVID-19 is upending the food supply chain. Thousands of workers have been infected. Businesses have shut down. Supplies of meats and other labor-intensive foods are tightening, while a surplus of perishable milk and crops has been dumped or left in fields to rot.
This is a nightmare for farmers, workers and consumers. Read More
“Can you help us achieve this?”
That was the question that Smithfield Foods’ chief sustainability officer asked Environmental Defense Fund more than five years ago, after Walmart challenged the world’s largest hog producer and pork processor to improve sustainability in its feed grain supply.
At the time, very few food companies considered grain sustainability to be their responsibility, and even fewer were taking steps to improve that segment of their supply chain. But Smithfield responded to Walmart’s challenge.
In 2013, the company committed to work with grain farmers in its supply chain to adopt farming practices that would optimize fertilizer and build soil health on 75 percent of the area from which Smithfield directly sources grain — about 450,000 acres. EDF partnered with Smithfield to figure out how to reach this goal.
Smithfield announced today that it exceeded that goal, improving practices on 560,000 acres in 2018. Read More
Grain elevator. Credit: Flickr user Wilson Hui
A new study out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that trying to make supply chains more sustainable is not for the faint of heart, especially when it comes to food – and corn in particular.
Companies are keenly aware that consumers care about where their ingredients come from and how they were grown, and that improving efficiencies along the supply chain can be good for business. But the raw ingredients at the end of those chains are typically produced by a vast network of farmers who bring their corn to regional grain elevators and then sell their crops to grain traders. This is just the start of a lengthy and complicated process that can be challenging for food companies to disentangle and understand, let alone influence to become more sustainable.
That’s why the new study, which focuses on a corn supply chain model developed by the University of Minnesota’s Northstar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise (NiSE), can be an important tool for empowering food companies with information that can help them tackle the tough job of supply chain sustainability. Read More
Many of us spend a considerable amount of time thinking about food – whether it’s deciding what’s for dinner or how healthy something is for our family. Given that I work on food sustainability and am married to a chef, I spend an even more extreme amount of time thinking about food.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal hosted the first annual Global Food Forum in New York City – more proof that food and agricultural issues are increasingly on the radar screens of many executives, including those from Walmart, Campbell’s Soup, Panera, Perdue, Monsanto and many more.
I was eager to attend the event and hear the discussions among some of the most powerful food companies out there. They covered many topics including food safety, “clean” labels, biotechnology, antibiotic use and the humane treatment of animals.
All important stuff – but given the prestige of the event, I’d like to bring up the elephant in the room (or more accurately the elephant not in the room): sustainability. The environmental impacts of agriculture were barely touched upon, and considering the corporate heavyweights who were in the room, this was a missed opportunity on a massive scale. Read More
Hunkering down in a duck blind with my dad on the Cuivre River, which feeds into the Mississippi.
Clang. A knot of rusted chains pulls shut the driveway gate, bringing it closed with a final smack against a worn fence post. Just like that, my Sunday afternoon visit to our family farm in Clarksville, Missouri ends. After a quick trip home to Saint Louis, it’s time to catch a flight to Washington, D.C. for my internship.
But not before my dad asks, “Do you want to see downtown?”. I laugh, but agree to check it out. “Downtown” is a relative term in Clarksville – a quiet river community with fewer than 500 residents.
The streets slope down to the shoreline, where historic buildings meet the Mighty Mississippi. A few barges float nearby, unperturbed by the currents that pull toward the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a calm day on the river. I spot a sign emblazoned with a familiar red and white Army Corps castle. Just ahead, a concrete arm extends across the channel. Read More
Photo credit: Don Graham
The results are in, so food companies take notice: American consumers are educating themselves on our food system, and they’re increasingly asking for sustainably produced foods. That’s a key takeaway from the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation’s new report on consumer attitudes toward food.
It’s an exciting trend, since what we buy sends a signal across the supply chain for farmers to grow ingredients in ways that protect our natural resources, and for food companies to source sustainably grown products. Sustainably produced food also supports food security, which is essential to our continued prosperity.
Yet sustainably grown products are almost always more expensive to produce than their unsustainable counterparts, which is why many farmers require a premium for changing their production practices to reduce environmental impacts.
To improve air and water quality and protect farmers’ livelihoods, sustainability can’t just be a luxury. Sustainable food production has to become business as usual.
Here’s why we’re well on our way to meeting that goal.
Photo: Eric Vance, US EPA
For a month now, South Florida Atlantic beaches have been blanketed by a sickly green, toxic algae sludge that has kept tourists away and caused local businesses to lose millions.
Florida has a bigger headache this summer than most states, but algae blooms are hardly unique.
Last week, more than 100 people were sickened from toxic algae in a Utah lake largely fed by agricultural runoff and treated sewage water. And just two summers ago, an outbreak in Lake Erie forced the City of Toledo to close off its water supply for nearly half a million residents.
Agricultural runoff also means wasted money for farmers, who can spend approximately half of their input costs on fertilizer.
There are ways to reduce the runoff that contributes to water quality problems and kills marine life, year after year. Algae blooms can be minimized and maybe even prevented if we scale up existing efforts to improve fertilizer efficiency and soil health – practices that can also save farmers money and boost their yields.
Two initiatives and private-sector partnerships are making real headway in doing just that. And if these efforts are replicated at scale, they could have a national – and even international – impact. Read More
Last month I spent some time in Bentonville, Arkansas, at Walmart’s semi-annual “Sustainability Showcase,” a celebration of the company’s progress in implementing environmental initiatives.
During the showcase, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon invited the executives of major Fortune 500 companies in attendance to share their insights on sustainability – and I was inspired. On stage were the CEOs of Cargill, Kellogg, as well as Dr. Mehmood Khan, Vice Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer, Global Research and Development for PepsiCo.
I was struck by how open and bold these CEOs were in recognizing the need and their responsibility to help solve major environmental challenges such as climate change and water pollution. McMillon, for example, started the discussion by explaining that 20 percent of lakes in Minnesota are not drinkable, a situation that “touches people personally every day.”
Here’s my take on the top two agricultural highlights – and why I’m more confident than ever that sustainable farming initiatives will improve water and air quality across the U.S. Read More
Earlier this week, a former sustainability executive with McDonald’s delivered a wake-up call for environmental groups, listing “5 ways that NGOs stunt sustainability.” In this article, Bob Langert explains the ways that nonprofits are failing to help companies turn sustainability commitments into on-the-ground results. In the context of sustainable palm oil, he notes:
“You can’t just go after big brands and expect them to manage a supply chain that has them seven stages removed, starting with the smallholders, to mills, then plantations, to storage facilities, refineries, ingredient manufacturers and then product manufacturers, then into a final product a retailer sells, such as ice cream, a granola bar or shampoo — with palm as a minute ingredient.”
He’s right – sustainability in supply chains, especially in agriculture, is incredibly complex. So how can environmental groups effectively champion sustainability progress throughout global supply chains, from the C-suite to crop fields? Here are three ideas. Read More