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…
As mentioned in one of our previous blog posts, the Living income Community of Practice, co-hosted by the Food Lab, ISEAL and GIZ, has shifted our annual workshop originally planned for Abidjan in April, to a series of three virtual workshops. The second of the three-part series will take place on May 27th (more information available here).…
Many of us are finding silver linings in the global shutdown, even as we fret about the fate of our more vulnerable partners in farming communities bound to suffer dearly from the economic fall-out of the pandemic. While comparatively small, the opportunity to engage for longer, more reflective conversations is one such silver lining. The…
By Elizabeth Reaves In the context of COVID, I am finding the tension between current reality and systems transformation to be paralyzing and I came to the concept of hospice. If we let go, what will be there to hold everyone while we bounce forward, or build back better? If resilience is the ability…
Learning from Two Value Chain Pilots Informs New Business Guide for Addressing Food Loss & Waste in Smallholder Systems Smallholder supply chains and family farms in the developing world hold exciting potential for reducing food loss and waste (FLW) and increasing the profitability and sustainability of our food systems. For this reason, the Food Lab…
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,…