Sustainable Food Laboratory

Sustainable Food Lab
Areas of work for 2007 

1. Agree on Principles for Supply Chains that Reflect Sustainable Food Lab’s Mission
2. Assist Buyers and Producers to Implement Principles through Guidelines and Practices
3. Facilitate Innovation Diffusion
4. Establish Indicators, Inventory Members, and Report on Overall Progress toward Mainstream Sustainability
5. Foster Networks of Relationships Among Key Players
6. Communicate to Key Audiences
7. Evaluate Progress and Develop Long-Term Plan

1. Agree on Principles for Supply Chains that Reflect Sustainable Food Lab’s Mission

The mission of the Sustainable Food Lab is to accelerate improvement in mainstream food and agriculture so we can sustain a high quality life on earth.

Believing that we can only effect market transformation if we work together, we convene a global network of leaders from businesses, NGOs, government, and organizations of farmers, farm workers and consumers.

We define a sustainable food and agriculture system as one in which:

• Farmers, farm workers, and all other actors in value chains have livable incomes;
• The fertility of soil is maintained and improved;
• The availability and quality of water are protected and enhanced;
• Nature and biodiversity are protected and enhanced; and The flow of energy and the discharge of waste, including greenhouse gas emissions, are within the capacity of the earth to sustain forever.

The Business Coalition leadership is now considering the following proposal: All business members of the Sustainable Food Lab commit to continuous improvement in the purchase guidelines and practices in their supply chains by:

• Adopting common principles and a commitment to measure progress;
• Coordinating resources to assist members in the testing, adoption, and assessment of improved purchase guidelines and practices;
• Creating ways for members to learn and replicate one another’s experiences (e.g. SYSCO’s IPM standards, Unilever’s fishery assessment guidelines, Costco’s green been supply chain assessment);
• Through participation in the larger Sustainable Food Lab, build credibility by public reporting and collaboration with stakeholders such as leading nonprofits, UN multilateral agencies, and major foundations like Kellogg and Gates.

2. Assist Buyers and Producers to Implement Principles through Guidelines and Practices

Agricultural production practices, processing, packaging, and distribution practices along supply chains are all business decisions, although influenced by both regulations and customer demands.

The Sustainable Food Lab, with the participation of major food companies and NGOs, is positioned to exert positive influence on the food and agriculture system by providing a resource and implementation “community of practice.” In order to support purchasing guidelines and practices that create demand for sustainable products in more equitable and stable supply chains, Sustainable Food Lab will:

1. Provide an information clearinghouse of certification and verification schemes, and ways to measure impacts;
2. Foster networks of relationships among key players who can increase the pace of innovation;
3. Provide a platform for learning about innovations in purchase guidelines and practices—share tools and stories to inspire more action; and
4. Develop a common working framework for understanding the systems forces that need to be understood to “change the game” of mainstream food supply.

Within the Sustainable Food Lab, the Business Coalition is experimenting with how members can accelerate their efforts to develop and share guidelines and specifications that would demand more sustainable products. The Sustainable Livelihoods initiative is examining how to build the capacity of farmers to meet new specifications and at how to design buying practices through the supply chain to prevent further exclusion of the small and medium sized producers from the market. The fisheries initiative has launched a Responsible Fisheries Alliance to share guidelines that improve resource management and the livelihood of fishing communities. The Food for Health initiative is assisting the adoption of better purchase specifications by large institutions. The Responsible Commodities Initiative is collecting relevant research to inform standards and investment in biofuels.

3. Facilitate Innovation Diffusion

Each initiative area and project will produce case write-ups with outcome and impact data as well as tools and lessons to support scale-up, adaptation and adoption by other organizations. These case write-ups will be supplemented with journalistically compelling stories. Sustainable Food Lab members will also have opportunities for in-place visits and learning journeys where innovations are under way.

The purpose of initiative assessment is to stimulate an ongoing exchange among project leaders and the group as a whole, with opportunities to ask questions and learn how to accelerate positive change. We will ask projects that can contribute to the learning of the Food Lab members to build assessment and evaluation into their project plans from the beginning.

The following format is a starting point for the analytic and tool-collection part of the process:

1. Goals
   1. What was the problem you set out to solve, or the goal of systems improvement you were working towards? What new goals have emerged?
2. Innovation testing
   1. What were the key elements of your change strategy? What were the innovative practices you tried? What did you do? What happened? What worked and what didn’t?
   2. What did you learn that could benefit the SFL as a whole
3. Achievements
   1. What were the impacts on the ground?
   2. What were the limitations?
4. Replication potential and strategy:
   1. For what situations would this be appropriate?
   2. How would we scale up or replicate?
   3. What are the key lessons being learned that can inform efforts by others to replicate/scale up?
   4. What documentation or support would be needed to help others replicate or scale up?
5. Principles of more sustainable supply chains
   1. What principles emerged with respect to sustainable supply chain characteristics such as price stability, financial transparency, shared access to information, public sector support for infrastructure, consumer demand as a driver, and so forth?
6. Systemic barriers
   1. What system forces are encountered and what else would need to be done to have greater impact?

Each innovation will need to be tested against our larger aspiration: What does it reveal about what else would need to change to meet our goals for moving to a more sustainable food system? Market transformation needs to take account of the systemic trends in the global food and agriculture system, including the following:

• The “race to the bottom” in commodity systems, continually driving down farm product prices, that results in land exploitation and poverty in disadvantaged farm communities;
• The concentration of purchasing power in ever fewer hands, particularly retail, and the influence of this concentration through all supply chains;
• Increasingly strict specifications and procurement practices, designed to meet end consumer needs, but disadvantaging smaller producers as an unintended consequence.

The following graphic describes a continuum of places where Sustainable Food Lab initiatives and projects are acting in the system. Examples of current activities are listed in a separate document.

4. Establish Indicators, Inventory Members, and Report on Overall Progress toward Mainstream Sustainability

Each member organization and project will report on social, environmental and financial performance. The following draft measures are drawn from work at Unilever.

Aggregate measure of market change might include the following: % producers producing sustainable commodities % food purchasing dollars spent on sustainable food products (first conversion, second conversion, retail, consumer). % of market share of retailers and food service carrying sustainable food products % consumers understanding and buying sustainable food products

Each Sustainable Food Lab project and member will track progress against impacts most relevant to the project or organization, using measures such as the following:

• Protect and improve x ha of natural habitat
• Improve soil health on x ha of land
• Improve the livelihoods of x farm workers and their families
• Improve quality of x m3 of water
• Reduce toxic chemical use with x kg per year
• Reduce GHG emissions x mt per year

The Sustainable Food Lab is NOT in the business of judging companies but IS in the business of judging the effectiveness of initiatives that contribute to sustainability and collecting data about overall progress toward mainstream sustainability. Periodic reports on progress can balance to stream of publications that describe challenges to sustainability. We do not want to “greenwash” but we do want to inspire.

5. Foster Networks of Relationships among Key Players

The whole Sustainable Food Lab membership will be invited to meet in London February 13-15, 2007 and in Guatemala October 16-19, 2007. These meetings will enable learning about specific innovations as well as aggregated impacts from all member organizations.

The Sustainable Food Lab will also sponsor learning journeys and retreats to accompany larger meetings and in addition to larger meetings.

6. Communicate to Key Audiences

Individuals leading projects and organizational initiatives will contribute to case studies shared in email updates twice a month. The Learning History will be compiled into a Sustainable Food Lab Story. A field book will begin to record systems understanding, innovation experiences, tools and methods for mainstreaming sustainably produced food. A presentation will be continuously improved and made available to all Sustainable Food Lab leaders for meetings and conferences. The Sustainable Food Lab web site will be kept up to date and made more interactive.

7. Evaluate Progress and Develop Long-Term Plan

A 2-3 year organizational structure and funding plan will be developed by Sustainable Food Lab leadership by the end of 2007 or early 2008. That plan will be informed by an evaluation of progress to-date conducted by JoAnne Berkenkamp. She will follow the following questions for overall Sustainable Food Lab evaluation as well as evaluating some of the specific initiatives:

1. What is being accomplished by the Food Lab to test innovations and expand the knowledge base about sustainable food supply chains, increasing demand, and standards?
   1. What key lessons are emerging?
   2. To what extent have major food-related businesses increased their commitment and actions to further sustainability?
   3. What tangible forms has this taken?
   4. Is the engagement of major food businesses an effective way to achieve change in the US food system?
   5. What are the key factors at play?
2. How has corporate engagement influenced participating NGOs and vice versa?
3. What evidence is available that SFL innovations are being adopted and taken to scale?
   1. What lessons are emerging about the drivers and inhibitors of “mainstreaming” these innovations?
4. What is being learned about how to enlist and sustain participation by, and build relationships among, key stakeholders from the private sector, government and non-profit worlds?
   1. Has the Lab assembled the team of players needed to achieve its goals?
   2. Why or why not?
5. What leadership and management structures, and staff capabilities, are needed by the Lab?
6. What is being learned about application of the Change Lab model and “U” process as the Food Lab matures?
   1. What are the creative tensions in these models?
   2. How has the process influenced participants and their organizations?
7. To what extent are the Lab and the initiatives created by it financially sustainable.
   1. What factors have influenced this?
8. What intellectual contributions have been made by the Food Lab to the broader movement for sustainable food?
   1. Has learning about the Change Lab model and U Process been captured and made available to similar change efforts?
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Calendar

27-29 September 2006 Steering Committee Meeting, New England Center, Durham, NH
11-12 December 2006 Business Coalition Meeting, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, CA
13-16 February 2007 Sustainable Food Lab Meeting, London, UK
October 2007 Sustainable Food Lab Meeting, Antigua, Guatemala,
China, late 2007 Learning Journey