By Stephanie Daniels The concept of living income of farmers allows us to consider if the combined effect of various farming practices, voluntary sustainability standards, productivity investments and premiums prices all add up to the conditions under which farmers can afford a decent standard of living. It can facilitate the dialogue regarding the smart mix…
By Elizabeth Reaves Just a few weeks ago the Food Lab and some of our corporate partners were standing around in the muddied farmyard of a large Washington State dairy, with a chilly Pacific Northwest mist clinging to the hillsides and sitting low over the cows lined up for milking. For the Food Lab team,…
With help from the McKnight and Walton Family Foundation, Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Food Lab have launched the Cover Crop Leadership Lab (CCLL), a peer to peer group for farmer led organizations, which aims to increase cover crop use throughout the Midwest. Farmer facing programs that connect groups of farmers in one place,…
Mars Petcare, with project support from the Food Lab, has become the first company to deliver a case study measuring carbon using the new Gold Standard protocols (standards designed to meet the global GHG reduction goals set forth in the Paris Agreement). Most farmers do not manage for GHGs, but they care about their soils…
Last month, Daniella Malin, the Food Lab’s Agriculture & Climate Program Director, participated in a launch meeting of OpenTEAM in Denver, Colorado. The collaborative project seeks to harness vast amounts of open source data and software to drive soil health improvements across millions of acres of farmland and change the future of our planet. OpenTEAM…
In 2018, the Food Lab (in our role with the Living Income Community of Practice) supported the Ghana cocoa sector to establish a sector wide living income benchmark and publicize the accompanying KIT income gap analysis. Following this work, the Food Lab has worked closely with Steering Committee member, Kuapa Kokoo Ltd, to develop an…
By Hal Hamilton Since I became a live-next-door grandfather, it has occurred to me that the path to personal mastery, common to both parenting and system leadership, is revealing. I notice the following approaches by both parents and leaders: Make demands. Figure out shared self-interest. Facilitate long-term shifts. Each of these three approaches is…
In 2016 the Food Lab joined an USAID Feed the Future program focusing on private sector engagement in climate-smart agriculture. The program became three linked initiatives (shown below), and to date, the many partners involved have made great strides toward engaging the private sector to act on climate smart agriculture in their supply chains. You…
In a case study produced for the USAID Feed the Future Learning Community for Supply Chain Resilience, the Food Lab features member Ben & Jerry’s and their effort to increase cocoa farmer income while building resilience to climate change. Helping Cocoa Farmers to Achieve A Living Income and Adapt to Climate Change follows the popular ice…
From the creation of the Cool Farm Tool to our work in climate-smart agriculture, much of the Food Lab’s focus has been on building resilience, reducing agricultural GHG emissions, improving soil and above ground carbon sequestration and improving farmer livelihoods. For many of the organizations we work with, reaching and measuring climate targets while making…