What we learned feeding oats to cattle
Depending on where you are, agriculture today is based mainly on simplified rotations such as the corn/soybean system in the Midwest. Planting cover crops is a great first step, but…
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Australia Cool Soil Initiative Grows to 1.5 million Acres
Check out this video featuring Kellogg’s work on Cool Soil Initiative in Australia. The Cool Soil Initiative was launched in 2017 under the leadership of Mars Petcare and in 2020,…
Trailblazers in Soil Health: No-till on the Plains
Photo shows Steve Swaffar, Executive Director of No-till on the Plains (left) with Jim Johnson, Agronomist at Noble Research Institute (right) examining soil. Steve is an active SHLL member, passionate…
System leadership is not just desirable; it’s necessary to deliver impact
By Hal Hamilton The Sustainable Food Lab has two objectives: 1) deliver impacts in the ways that supply chains affect people and nature, and 2) increase the capabilities of “system…
System Leadership in Action: An Interview with Andre Eitner
Andre Eitner has been part of the Food Lab family for over decade, including as a participant in our Impact Lab and learning journeys. We decided to (virtually) sit down…
How to achieve GHG goals and millions of acres in regenerative agriculture? Report from the field and next steps: a “Scale Lab”
Hal Hamilton and Elizabeth Reaves In late 2020, one of our colleagues, who is responsible for the greenhouse gas commitments of a large food company, asked us to help quantify…
Cool Soil Initiative Launches in Australia
Mark Torrens, a grain buyer for Mars Petcare, had been watching the changes in weather and wheat yields across the Asia-Pacific region, and he worried about future supply. Four years…
Funding Secured to Continue to Make Diverse Rotations Work!
The Food Lab is thrilled to announce that together with Practical Farmers of Iowa, we have been awarded a Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) which will expand our work to understand the value…
A Living Income Toolkit from the Food Lab and GIZ
Farmers cannot invest in their farms if they can’t cover their costs of production and generate a margin for reinvestment. One of the Food Lab’s key tenants to a sustainable…
On-Farm Data Continues to Reveal Benefits of Diverse Rotations
PFI has observed benefits from diverse rotations with small grains, including GHG reductions, roots in the ground year-round and yield improvements, from farmers like Tom Frantzen pictured above We are…
Keeping Change Moving When Everything Stops
Many of us are finding silver linings in the global shutdown, even as we fret about the fate of our more vulnerable partners in farming communities bound to suffer dearly…
Hospice in the time of COVID
By Elizabeth Reaves In the context of COVID, I am finding the tension between current reality and systems transformation to be paralyzing and I came to the concept of…
Business Guide for Addressing Food Loss & Waste in Smallholder Systems
Learning from Two Value Chain Pilots Informs New Business Guide for Addressing Food Loss & Waste in Smallholder Systems Smallholder supply chains and family farms in the developing world hold…
A View of the Future While Standing in the Mud
By Elizabeth Reaves Just a few weeks ago the Food Lab and some of our corporate partners were standing around in the muddied farmyard of a large Washington State dairy,…
Cover Crop Leadership Lab Takes Root
With help from the McKnight and Walton Family Foundation, Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Food Lab have launched the Cover Crop Leadership Lab (CCLL), a peer to peer group…
Food Lab Supports Mars Petcare to Achieve Climate-Smart Wheat Supply Chain
Mars Petcare, with project support from the Food Lab, has become the first company to deliver a case study measuring carbon using the new Gold Standard protocols (standards designed to…
Bold Effort Launched Turn Agriculture from a Major GHG Source into a Climate Change Solution
Last month, Daniella Malin, the Food Lab’s Agriculture & Climate Program Director, participated in a launch meeting of OpenTEAM in Denver, Colorado. The collaborative project seeks to harness vast amounts…
“Asetina Yiedie Akonhoma” Food Lab Teams Up with Kuapa Kokoo and Guittard Chocolate on Living Income
In 2018, the Food Lab (in our role with the Living Income Community of Practice) supported the Ghana cocoa sector to establish a sector wide living income benchmark and publicize…
Parenting and System Leadership: A Common Path to Mastery
By Hal Hamilton Since I became a live-next-door grandfather, it has occurred to me that the path to personal mastery, common to both parenting and system leadership, is revealing.…
Lessons from Private Sector Engagement in the USAID Learning Community for Supply Chain Resilience
In 2016 the Food Lab joined an USAID Feed the Future program focusing on private sector engagement in climate-smart agriculture. The program became three linked initiatives (shown below), and to…
Food Lab member Ben & Jerry’s rolls out innovative program for living income and climate resilience
In a case study produced for the USAID Feed the Future Learning Community for Supply Chain Resilience, the Food Lab features member Ben & Jerry’s and their effort to increase cocoa…
Climate Collaborative Builds a Rooted Community Around Carbon Farming
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…
Evolution of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Nile Breweries Limited Smallholder Sourcing Program
Nile Breweries Limited (NBL), Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Ugandan subsidiary, launched its sorghum-based Eagle Lager in 2002. The sorghum-based beer is crafted from local grains predominantly grown by smallholder Ugandan farmers. The…
Livestock Specialists: the missing link to unlocking soil health!
For the last three years, SFL has partnered with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) on our Small Grains in the Corn Belt Initiative to promote small grain rotations. With funding from the Walton…
Flying While Grounded
An Introduction to the Core Tools of System Leadership By: Hal Hamilton and LeAnne Grillo System leadership is one output of the Food Lab and Impact Lab, and it borrows…
An Exploration Between Canadian and US Dairy
Since the Food Lab’s beginning 15 years ago, learning journeys have been a core part of our DNA, always accompanying annual summits and sometimes other events too. This year, in lieu…
Climate Smart Coffee Website Launched
The USAID Feed the Future Learning Community for Supply Chain Resilience is happy to share the launch of a new website aimed to provide coffee companies with the resources they…
Olam and IITA Join Forces to Help Ugandan Coffee Farmers Build Long-Term Climate Resilience
Looking to ensure that coffee farmers continue to invest in coffee in ways that enable them to grow production and quality in the face of climate change, Olam, a global…
Practical Tools Needed for Implementation of Climate Smart Cocoa
The cocoa industry has taken bold steps to preventing deforestation in the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), a public private collaboration between 33 cocoa and chocolate companies (85% of the…
Cool Farm Tool Grows in Coffee
One of the Sustainable Food Lab’s flagship project, the Cool Farm Tool, is reaching new fields and farms. Since 2008 the Tool’s mission has enabled millions of growers around the…
Webinar: Lessons Learned: Two Years of Small Grains in the Corn Belt
As part of our Small Grains in the Corn Belt initiative, Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) and the Food Lab are asking the questions: Can farmers be profitable when adding…
Food Lab Member AB InBev tackles Climate-Smart Awareness in Uganda’s Grain Sector
The Sustainable Food Lab has worked with the beverage company AB InBev and its Uganda subsidiary Nile Breweries to explore ways to increase the resilience of small-scale grain farmers to…
Vanilla can be a Profitable and Climate-Smart Crop for Smallholder Farmers
Don Seville, Executive Director of the Food Lab, is a facilitator of the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative (SVI), an industry initiative, which aims to promote the long-term stable supply of high quality,…
U.S. Organic Grains Report
In collaboration with the Organic Trade Association, the Organic Grain Collaboration has co-authored a new report, titled “U.S. Organic Grain – How to Keep It Growing“. The report includes information on…
Finding a Catalyst for Change in Agriculture- PODCAST
Elizabeth Reaves, our Senior Program Director of Agriculture and Environment, is featured in Our Farms, Our Future podcast produced by SARE exploring a catalyst for change in agriculture. Listen to Episode…
Small Grains in the Corn Belt Newsletter- January 2019
Check out our latest Small Grains in the Corn Belt Newsletter which shares what we’ve been up to this past month. From a farmer conference to new modeling capabilities, we’ve…
Open Source Soil Health Communications Toolkit
In honor of World Soil Day, the Food Lab has created a soil health communications toolkit to help our partners talk to the business relevance of soil health. The toolkit…
Small Grains in the Corn Belt Newsletter
This month, Sustainable Food Lab launched a monthly Small Grains in the Corn Belt Initiative newsletter. In partnership with Practical Farmers of Iowa, the goal of this initiative is to…
Next Stop for Impact Lab Fellows: How Managed Markets Might Enable Farmers to make Sustainability Investments
The Impact Leadership Lab is a peer learning community of sustain ability and sourcing professionals in companies. Their next adventure will be a June 2019 learning journey with dairy farm leaders in Quebec and…
The Three Barriers to Business Sustainability – and how to get through them
Written by Hal Hamilton Sustainability in the business world always begins with quick wins. We increase efficiency with energy, water and fertilizer, for example. Those innovations save money and so…
Report Release on Ghana Living Income Benchmark
The Living Income Community of Practice, of which the Food Lab is a founding partner, released a report on the Ghana Living Income Benchmark & Analysis of Income Gaps for…
Webinar Series: How to Climate Proof Your Coffee Supply Chain
Like many agricultural crops, coffee is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. How to Climate Proof Your Coffee Supply Chain is an eight part webinar series geared towards coffee suppliers, investors…
Study Finds Significant Reductions in GHG Emissions Among Egg Farmers: A Cool Farm Tool Case Study
Daniella Malin, our Senior Program Director of Agriculture & Climate, is a co-author of a new study on how to reduce GHG’s in commercial egg production published in the Journal…
New Systems Leader Fieldbook
Food Lab partners have some great tools that are open source. The Academy for Systems Change has made available A System Leader’s Fieldbook that includes tools from many leading practitioners,…
Soil Under Our Feet
Soil Under Our Feet Click here for PDF version Soil Building Dilemmas and Breakthroughs Elizabeth Reaves and Hal Hamilton This past June, while facilitating a learning journey with a group…
Private Sector Consultation on Climate Smart Agriculture
Smallholder farmers around the globe are facing unstable productivity due to changing climate and weather patterns. The ways in which the private sector supports these farmers to build resilience to…
How Dirty is Sustainable Agriculture?
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…
SVI: Driving Sustainability in the Vanilla Supply Chain
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…
Moving the Needle: Critical Success Factors for Scaling Innovation in Asset Finance for Small and Growing Agribusinesses
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…
Water Smart Agriculture: A requirement for resilient farms and supply chains
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…
The Business of Landscapes
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…
System Leadership in Action
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,…
Climate smart cocoa picks up steam in Ghana
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…
Cool Farm Alliance celebrates achievements and plans for future developments
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…
Conference: How to build supply security and resilience with smallholder farmers
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…
The Food Lab in 2016
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…
Scope 4 in Action: A Hopeful Example from the Amazon
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…
Measure to Manage Food Loss in Supply Chains
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…
Coffee and Cocoa Companies Plan for Climate Change Impacts
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…
