Food Systems Expertise
The Sustainable Food Lab works with food companies and agricultural organizations at all stages, from industry leaders to those just beginning sustainability programs. With decades of experience working around the world, our staff:
- Build on deep knowledge of global food supply chains and extensive networks of companies, NGOs, researchers, and governmental agencies;
- Develop and draw on scientifically based measurement tools to identify impactful interventions;
- Span different regions, commodities, and farm types, from small-scale farmers growing vanilla, coffee, grains, and cocoa to large-scale grain, livestock, and dairy supply chains;
- Work with many large and small companies on strategies, including the internal and external alignment needed to execute those strategies;
- Orient our consulting towards system-level change, encouraging partners to join and support high-impact pre-competitive efforts.
Selection of Ongoing Consulting Clients and Partners
Our Capabilities
Whether you’re a Fortune 500 corporation, a start-up, or somewhere in-between, we can help your organization.
Strategy Development and Design
- Identify the most material issues and clarify goals;
- Scope players, their interests, and opportunities to partner;
- Identify gaps and opportunities for meeting corporate targets;
- Facilitate the development of roadmaps or troubleshoot existing ones.
Implementation and Management
- Develop or use existing measurement tools to baseline key issues and measure impacts;
- Recruit and engage key partners to work with farmers, collect data, and implement sustainability initiatives;
- Identify needed technical assistance, cultural support, or financial incentives needed to stimulate practice changes;
- Manage and synthesize data for use in continual learning, next-stage planning, and reporting;
- Facilitate decision-making and coordination among key partners.
To learn more or get started, contact us today.
Areas of Focus
Regenerative Agriculture
Through goal setting, pilot project design, market and stakeholder research, and other tools, we help our company partners navigate the landscape of questions around sustainable sourcing strategies, climate and GHG accounting, and farmer engagement approaches. We consider our consulting clients as partners and encourage them to learn alongside us, sharing their own experiences and expertise. With supply chain project design, we find the most success when we can identify and link food and beverage companies and their suppliers to on-the-ground partners. Keeping the farmer at the center of project design is core to our approach. We particularly enjoy projects in which we partner with farmers to identify, implement, and track practices that support their farm management goals alongside environmental stewardship.
Companies we’ve partnered with include AB InBev, Danone, King Arthur Baking Company, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Walmart.
Small-Scale Farmer Livelihoods
We are a global leader in precompetitive efforts to improve corporate practice towards better outcomes for farmers. We facilitate communities of practice and coordinate economic studies for deeper understanding and progress on farmer livelihoods. We help individual companies evaluate supply chains and partner directly with farmer cooperatives. By building relationships with partners on-the-ground, we’re able to improve the positive impact of partnerships for long term prosperity of farmers and resilient value chains.
Impact Strategy and Measurement
We help individual companies develop frameworks, design key indicators and create data-collection tools to monitor and evaluate supply chain progress toward sustainability goals in a range of impact areas including living income, productivity, environmental resilience and social resilience. We have experience working in commercial and smallholder grains, coffee, cocoa and dairy.
