Values Driven Consulting | Sustainable Food Lab

Expertise
Capabilities
Examples
Focus Areas

We work with food companies that are leaders in sustainable sourcing as well as companies taking their first leap into sustainability practices. With decades of experience working around the world, the Food Lab staff:

Build on their deep knowledge of global food supply chains and extensive networks of NGOs, researchers and governmental agencies;
Develop and draw-on scientifically based measurement tools to identify impactful interventions, and
Span different regions, commodities and farm types, from smallholder systems growing vanilla, coffee and cocoa to large scale grain, livestock and dairy supply chains.

Strategy Development & Design

Clarifying goals in specific supply chains including region-specific sustainability risks.
Scoping of the players, issues, and science
Identifying gaps in the current system and developing action plans based corporate targets;
Providing written recommendations for a roadmap to achieve goals

Implementation & Management

Developing or using existing measurement tools to baseline key issues and measure impacts;
Recruiting and engaging key partners to collect data, build and implement sustainability initiatives;
Identifying incentives needed to stimulate short-term investments to reach long-term goals;
Providing data synthesis for use in reporting; and
Facilitating decision making and coordination among key partners.

To get started, contact us today.

In order to meet MarsPetcare climate-based targets, the Food Lab is designing and implementing a soil health initiative in NSW Australia to address long term farm viability and GHG mitigation in their grain supply chain. The Food Lab is working directly with farmers and their advisors using the Cool Farm Tool and assisting with rolling out new farm management practices that build farmer resilience and supply chain stability in the face of climate change and sequester carbon through cover cropping and other approaches.

SFL is supporting Pepsico in delivering on their agricultural climate goals by working directly in key supply chains and at a global level building detailed agricultural climate change mitigation resources for the agricultural teams around the world. In specific supply chains, SFL is working with Pepsi to demonstrate how to use the Cool Farm Tool at scale to baseline, improve and track agricultural GHG performance over time. At the global level the GHG mitigation resources map agronomic expertise to GHG intelligence to accelerate progress.

Ben & Jerry’s Producer Development Initiative (PDI) is a project with Fair TradeTM to help attain living incomes for small-scale farmers in Ben & Jerry’s main tropical crops including cocoa, vanilla, almonds and coffee. The Food Lab provides overall management for the PDI program and leads the program design in cocoa and coffee. As part of the Food Lab’s role, we have overseen research design, developed innovative pilot programs and partnered with field staff on the ground to provide verified results.

Food Lab staff have on-going projects and expertise in the following areas (among others). Please contact us if you would like to learn more or join in our efforts to create the food system of the future.

Soil Health & Climate Change

Soil health can be a multi-solver in agricultural systems by building resiliency in the face of extreme weather, protecting water quality, and proactively addressing climate change by sequestrating carbon in the the soil. We work with food companies to reach their sustainability goals across various measures from water quality to GHGs. Our expertise lies in working across supply chains and developing relationships with buyers to support more diversified cropping systems as well as managing farmer engagement programs. Through our extensive networks and expertise in project management, we partner with food companies, millers, scientists, NGOs, GHG measurement programs, and farmer education networks to support corporate sustainability targets and enable farmers to adopt new, economically viable practices.

Living Income

The Food Lab has been a global leader in developing benchmarks and best practices for setting living income standards in smallholder farming systems. We assist individual companies evaluate supply chains and partner directly with farmer cooperatives to achieve their corporate targets. We help develop living income benchmarks and build relationships with partners on-the-ground to create effective programs. Currently, we are managing projects in cocoa, coffee, vegetable production, and vanilla in Latin America and Africa.

Impact Measurement

We assist individual companies in developing frameworks, designing key indicators and creating data collection tools to monitor and evaluate supply chain progress toward sustainability goals in a range of impact areas including income, productivity, environmental resilience and social resilience. We have experience working in commercial and smallholder grains, coffee and smallholder dairy.

Food Loss and Waste in Smallholder Systems

The Food Lab is a leader in addressing the complexities of Food Loss and Waste (FLW) in smallholder systems. Reducing FLW can help meet GHG goals as well as other key environmental targets. For example, by improving the amount of crop that is sold, critical forests can be protected by allowing farmers to improve their income using their current land base. We partners with companies, research organizations and measurement programs to discover how to reduce FLW in specific food crops and geographies.

Expertise

Build on their deep knowledge of global food supply chains and extensive networks of NGOs, researchers and governmental agencies;
Develop and draw-on scientifically based measurement tools to identify impactful interventions, and
Span different regions, commodities and farm types, from smallholder systems growing vanilla, coffee and cocoa to large scale grain, livestock and dairy supply chains.

Capabilities