By Hal Hamilton The Sustainable Food Lab has two objectives: 1) deliver impacts in the ways that supply chains affect people and nature, and 2) increase the capabilities of “system leaders” who make those impacts happen. Desirable impacts on farming systems—ecological and social—require shifts in the enabling conditions for farmer and business decisions, and those…
A key piece of shifting complex farming systems are leaders that can build broad support among coworkers, colleagues, farmers, business leaders, consumers and institutions with decision making power. Through our work in cropping systems in the US, we have been learning about the many different places these leaders can emerge. Dr. Andrea Basche is a…
Andre Eitner has been part of the Food Lab family for over decade, including as a participant in our Impact Lab and learning journeys. We decided to (virtually) sit down with him and dig into what he’s learned about effective systems leadership and what it means in his work. In his current position, Andre is…
Hal Hamilton and Elizabeth Reaves In late 2020, one of our colleagues, who is responsible for the greenhouse gas commitments of a large food company, asked us to help quantify costs and GHG impacts of work with farmers in their supply chain. The company was having some difficulty justifying projects in crop agriculture because of…
The Food Lab, together with over 25 soil health specialists from across the U.S. (IA, ID, IL, IN, NE, KS, SD, ND, MN, MI, OH, VT, VA, PA) is launching its second year of the Soil Health Leadership Lab. The Soil Health Leadership Lab was conceived as a peer-learning network for individuals who are on the…
Mark Torrens, a grain buyer for Mars Petcare, had been watching the changes in weather and wheat yields across the Asia-Pacific region, and he worried about future supply. Four years ago, he invited the Food Lab to join him in New South Wales, Australia. We spent a few days with Mark and his colleague Sarah Heazlewood,…
The Food Lab is thrilled to announce that together with Practical Farmers of Iowa, we have been awarded a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) which will expand our work to understand the value proposition of diversified crop rotations in the Midwest. The $1.1 million grant was one of 24 projects selected from more than 100 applicants through the…
Farmers cannot invest in their farms if they can’t cover their costs of production and generate a margin for reinvestment. One of the Food Lab’s key tenants to a sustainable supply chain has always been farmer profitability. In smallholder-based systems, farmer poverty rates are high and many lack access to basic social services, the Food…
PFI has observed benefits from diverse rotations with small grains, including GHG reductions, roots in the ground year-round and yield improvements, from farmers like Tom Frantzen pictured above We are entering our fourth year of working with and collecting data from Midwest farmers to document the benefits of diverse rotations – and the on-farm data…
By: Hal Hamilton The most important book I’ve read in years is Rebecca Henderson’s Reimaging Capitalism in a World on Fire. It’s the right book for this moment during which we each tumble with both fear and hope. She occasionally lets her deep caring show, but her style is pragmatic, almost matter of fact as…