Food and beverage companies are facing a rapidly changing world. Consumers everywhere are growing more knowledgeable and concerned about the ethics of where and how their food and drink are produced. At the same time, development organizations are increasingly seeing the critical role of the private sector in creating sustainable economic opportunities for small…
DetailsDear colleagues, Any of us with sustainability in our job descriptions can look back with pride or look forward with some trepidation. The launch of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals and the climate agreement in Paris remind us all of the critical role of agriculture in global sustainability solutions. As CEOs make new commitments…
DetailsUnder What Conditions Are Value Chains Effective Tools for Pro Poor Development? Understanding the benefits, costs, and risks when connecting small scale producers to formal markets is critical to supporting informed decision making by companies, farmers, NGOs, and donors about investing in supply chain opportunities. Key questions include: Who are the rural poor? Under what…
DetailsOn 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…
DetailsAre your raw materials ‘climate smart’? A new Food Lab and CCAFS partnership tackles the challenge of scaling climate smart value chains. Since 2010, the Sustainable Food Lab has partnered with the University of Aberdeen, Unilever and many others to develop the Cool Farm Tool, an open source quantification tool for measuring GHG emissions in…
DetailsThere are many sustainability challenges that by their nature cannot be solved by one actor alone. Water shortage, water pollution, climate mitigation and adaptation, and deforestation are examples of supply chain sustainability challenges are often best and most efficiently addressed through collaborative, sometimes public-private, frameworks. Recent progress on reducing deforestation in the Amazon (below) highlights…
DetailsThe 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…
DetailsMany of the countries’ largest organic food companies are working together to overcome a shared challenge: how to increase the supply of organic grain. This group has recently made some headway. At the surface, the challenge can seem a puzzle. Organic supply is unable to meet current demand, let alone projected growth. The organic premium…
DetailsAs multinational companies grow more sophisticated in understanding their supply chains, the research community is also getting better at modeling and predicting future weather patterns, diseases, water availability and other climate change impacts. The question is, how well are these sectors supporting and feeding each other? Is the science on shifting crop suitability reaching the…
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