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 sure farmers and the company are profitable is hard work. Research and tools from the scientific community provide much needed guidance but in these uncharted waters companies benefit from pre-competitive collaboration.
One pre-competitive project tackling climate change in the natural products industry is the Climate Collaborative. Since 2017 the Food Lab has supported Climate Collaborative as a fiscal sponsor, knowing that a climate change focused industry community could engage a larger audience to commit, act and make an impact toward climate change mitigation in a new and broader way. And in just two years, Climate Collaborative has done just that.
The Climate Collaborative was born from a belief, shared by natural products leaders, that their industry has great potential to lead the charge to reverse climate change by working together. As a community of businesses, the Climate Collaborative creates pathways to action, connects companies to resources and works together to create solutions to climate change. With nearly 400 companies now committed to climate action in just two years, Climate Collaborative has exceeded their targets made great strides in all of their nine focus areas.
In the past two years, the Food Lab has been particularly involved in Climate Collaborative’s agricultural commitments by providing support to their carbon farming initiative Rooted Community. The Rooted Community, is an interactive action group on carbon farming open to all companies that have made an agriculture commitment. The group meets monthly, and content addresses a range of topics relevant to carbon farming, including:
- Measurement to quantify regenerative agriculture
- Resilience in small-holder supply chains
- Marketing claims and communications
- Score cards and regenerative practices
The Rooted Community webpage is chock-full of resources, case studies and previous webinars that include conversations like “telling your regenerative story” or “the Operations, Advantages, and Challenges of Global Agroforestry Projects”. Companies who are interested in making a commitment and joining the Rooted Community should email Climate Collaborative to learn more. And as we continue to support the work of Climate Collaborative and Rooted Community, we hope you reach out to engage in a community full of opportunity, collaboration and action!
