Giving Compass' Take:

• A new report from the BCFN praises food industry leaders for aligning themselves with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, but calls upon businesses to engage in more concrete actions and use detailed reporting systems towards sustainable development.

• How can you find opportunities to invest in good food? Where is the need greatest? 

• Here's why sustainability alone is not enough when approaching the food industry. 

At the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN)’s announcement of the report, speakers commended the food industry for becoming aware of its role in problems like greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity harm, soil degradation, poverty, and obesity—and adopting goals and reporting systems to track their progress toward a sustainable system. However, reporting and monitoring is not enough, especially as businesses carefully select the information they publicize and use non-scientific—and non-consistent—benchmarks for progress.

“To achieve the SDGs, business leaders need to align their company’s performance, reporting, and monitoring with the SDGs, and to do so along their entire supply chains,” says Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

In the report’s assessment of 10 leading companies in the food industry, researchers found that companies also generally did not report on their supply chains in enough detail, provide specific information on food content or health impacts, or prove that they practice corporate citizenship—making exclusively positive impacts on the planet, rather than working to balance out negative externalities. “Despite all the excitement around SDGs, it is very superficial, what companies are doing. When we look at the impact they’re having underground, it is far from what we need to be seeing,” says Charlotte Ersboll, Senior Advisor to the United Nations Global Compact.

Read the full article on the food industry and SDGs by Katherina Walla at Food Tank.