Giving Compass' Take:

• Collaborative efforts between supermarkets and farmers to achieve more sustainable food production can have a significant impact.

• Why have some attempts to create relationships for sustainable food failed? How can members of the public help encourage and foster productive partnerships for sustainable food?

• Learn about web-based services for sustainable food companies. 

One of the most fascinating sustainability questions for food retailers is whether their corporate environmental policies can drive agroecology practices on the farm. While decades of rising consumer demand for organic food has reduced the agricultural use of prohibited substances, like pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, United States food retailers have struggled to develop policies that proactively promote a broader range of sustainable farming activities, including ecosystem protection, renewable energy, water conservation, and worker rights.

In their January 2018 report published in Global Environmental Change, “Improving environmental practices in agricultural supply chains: The role of company-led standards,” Stanford University researchers studied Woolworths, one of the five largest supermarket chains in South Africa.

Woolworths offered full access to data collected by their Farming for the Future program. This information was compared with data from GLOBALG.A.P, the world’s most widely implemented farm certification program. The analysis found that Woolworths’ large-scale fruit, vegetable, and flower growers adopted more environmental management practices, such as the use of cover crops, when compared both over time and with a random sample of farms certified by GLOBALG.A.P.

The program’s success was based on the farmers’ willingness to adopt the Farming for the Future program. Instead of imposing prescriptive rules, the program built a partnership that featured input from agricultural experts and feedback from farmers.

The Stanford study shows that supermarket policies can impact production practices and help build a more sustainable food system.

Read the full article on supermarkets and sustainable farming by Rob Guillemin at Food Tank