How businesses trade with farmers matters to their profitability and can contribute to farmer livelihoods and resilience. Mark Lundy from CIAT works with a wide range of coffee stakeholders, noting that just as there are many types of farmers, there is differentiation on the business side as well in terms of the quality and quantity…
The path to expanding organic grain acreage in Maine and New Brunswick is not clearly marked. The primary reason is that the market does not generate the profits necessary to entice producers to plant significant new ground in an organic production system, or transition from conventional to organic, when evaluating grain enterprises. However, based on…
The booming organic industry continues to be a bright spot for growth in the US farm economy averaging double-digit growth over the last five years. While the organic industry thrives, acres used for organic production in the US are not growing fast enough to keep up and hover around 2% of total US agriculture with…
The CEO Water Mandate couldn’t have stated it more clearly: “Water poses one of the most vital sustainable development challenges of our time.” Increasing pressures on water reserves and the effects of climate change underline the need for the food and beverage industry, along with public sector donors and governments, to prioritize practical solutions to…
As we prepare for the Cool Farm Alliance’s 2016 Annual General Meeting, we are also looking back to reflect on several notable achievements marked in 2015. Specifically, the Alliance: Was announced winner of the hotly-contested ‘Practice with Science’ Award Added new software features including data aggregation and a more flexible fertilizer interface allowing users to…
Michele Pisetta from Ferraro, Ann Burkhart from Starbucks, and Susan Forsell from McDonalds discussed opportunities for finding the shared business case for implementing sustainability measures, when partnerships are useful and determining when it is essential to have your own ‘boots on the ground’.
On April 1, the California Department of Water Resources hydrologists are expected to announce the smallest snowpack ever in state history. This will mark the fourth year of an unprecedented drought that has strained the capacity of residents, farmers, business, and government to respond to the immediate crisis and to think strategically about the future of water…
The shocking statistic that 33 percent of food is lost or wasted—one out of every three calories—begs the question, what can food and beverage companies do about food loss and waste in their supply chains? There is a long list of urgent and compelling issues that food and beverage companies are already grappling with in…
Keurig Green Mountain, Root Capital, Sustainable Harvest, and Unicafec discussed their use of mechanisms such as long term financing for farm renovation, extended contracting terms and technical assistance needed to build resiliency for the long term. Notes from the Panel: Benjamin Schmerler, Root Capital; Colleen Popkin, Keurig Green Mountain; Alfredo Alarcón Enciso, General Manager of…
USAID, along with many international donors, has prioritized large-scale partnerships with the private sector. Joost Guijt from CDI, Eduardo Tugendhat from CARANA and Jose Luis Ibarrola from Ecom-Armajaro discussed both the potential they see in these partnerships but also some of the outstanding questions to be explored. Ecom/Source Trust, and Carana are partners in the Peru…