Jan Gilhuis, Senior Program Manager in the IDH Fresh & Ingredients Program, and Don Seville, Co-director of the Sustainable Food Lab, discuss the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative. Hear about the motivation…
Millions of smallholders live in poverty, unable to meet basic needs. Smallholder farmers need to improve their incomes and competitiveness if they are to achieve and sustain a decent standard…
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,…
Despite the title, this blog is not about sex, unless we consider the teeming reproductive activity of billions of micro-organisms in every tablespoon of fertile soil. I’m writing for those…
SAMBAVA MADAGASCAR (May 18, 2017) – The US Department of Labor (USDOL) has provided $ 4 million to the International Labor Office (ILO) to support Madagascar in promoting a sustainable…
Check out the video from Expo West 2017 with speakers from Dr. Bronner’s, Sustainable Food Lab, Carbon Underground, Soil & More International, and Numi Tea
For a start let’s not assume sustainable agriculture will automatically solve food insecurity Sustainable Development Goal 2 is often referred to as the hunger goal, or as the agriculture goal.…
Contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represents a significant value creating opportunity for business. According to the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, achieving the SDGs will create up to…
A senior sustainability leader commented the other day that sustainable sourcing programs might be in danger of hitting their targets while missing the point. As sustainability is operationalized, we might…
The Sustainable Vanilla Initiative (SVI) aims to improve vanilla bean farmers’ livelihoods and assure the long-term stable supply of high quality natural vanilla. This voluntary food, flavors and fragrances industries…
Presenting the report Moving the Needle: Critical Success Factors for Scaling Asset Finance A new report by Epven, with support from the Shell Foundation and the Small Foundation, explores…
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…
Many Midwestern farmers remember oats as a part of their grandparents’ farm, a thing of the past. Corn and soybeans (or 2-crop rotation) now accounts for 95 percent of Iowa’s…
Are landscape approaches the next big thing or a passing fad? The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) , The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), International Union for Conservation of…
Over the coming year Sustainable Food Lab will be collecting and sharing stories of system leadership by individuals and organizations. In a Stanford Social Innovation Review article, Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton,…
A cross-section of more than 50 people representing the Ghana cocoa sector came together March 9 in Accra to review the advances of the Climate Smart Value Chain project being implemented by CIAT, IITA, Rainforest…
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…
How to build supply security and resilience with smallholder farmers 22nd – 23rd March 2016 Innovation Forum London, UK This multi-stakeholder conference will address the major risks for smallholder farmers…
Dear 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…
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…
Are 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…
There 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…
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…
Many 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…
As 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…