We choose this year’s theme intentionally – “leading into the future”. Both as an invitation for each of us to reflect on what is ahead for us as a cross sector community, but also to invite each of us to bring in our own questions of leadership.
While there is no question that the work at the organization and supply chain level to put sustainable sourcing into practice and have a real impact on sustainable agriculture remains a critical need and challenge, we are seeing many companies and NGOs talk about the need to increasingly complement the supply chain work with collaborative work outside of the supply chain boundaries. In trying to conceptualize the journey in pushing the boundaries through sustainable sourcing, we found the language from the world of carbon emissions helpful.
In this work, scope 2 is the clear starting place – measuring and reducing impact from your direct operations. Scope 2 reaches (in the case of energy) outside of your operations to consider the impact how the electricity was generated. Scope 3 reaches out to the raw material supply chain – working directly on the impacts of your raw materials.
And that’s hard enough, as we all know, and hardly solved. But as we have all dug into this, we are seeing places where working on our supply chains isn’t sufficient or the effective strategy. Areas beyond scope 3, that we term the scope 4 territory include:
whole farm (when you have to consider a full rotation and multiple crops in a sustainable farming system and improved livelihoods)
landscapes, when you are anchored by a common geographic feature like a watershed or forest
Sector, when you need to change the rules of the games for all players in a crop and geography
At this summit have a chance to explore together what we are learning about when, why, and how to work on these scope 4 issues.
Click on the pictures below to see presentations and articles.
