PRESS RELEASE -
Access to basic health care is critical for the wellbeing of rural West African cocoa communities. To help meet the need, The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) partnered with cocoa suppliers Blommer Chocolate and Olam Cocoa to fund and build a community health center in Cote d’Ivoire in the town of Teapleau on the Western side of the country. Cote d’Ivoire is one of the largest cocoa-producing countries in the world.
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Two powerful palm oil companies are fulfilling promises related to accountability in their supply chains and bolstering their sustainability.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
How does one move from a career as a commercial fisherman to becoming the winner of the 2015 Fuller Challenge, one of the most prestigious sustainability prizes? Bren Smith, founder of Thimble Island Ocean Farm and executive director of the non-profit GreenWave, snagged the US$100,000 prize for his 3D ocean-farming model, which aims to address the range of most pressing sustainability issues in the fishing industry: degradation of marine ecosystems, climate change mitigation and resilience, depleting fish stocks, and a decline in local fisherman jobs.
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A new age in gardening is dawning: Geological agriculture, aka gravel gardening — a completely soil-less way to grow all kinds of crops in sedimentary rock.Leading the charge is To Soil Less, a family business founded by former management consultant Richard Campbell in 2011.
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The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has released new voluntary criteria that expand on its existing Principles & Criteria (P&C) for sustainable palm oil production.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Policymakers can learn about how the transformation of agricultural markets is likely to affect the poor in the developing world by studying Walmart, says a new report from the Global Food and Agriculture Program at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.Small Farmers, Big Retailers: Are New Sourcing Strategies a Path to Inclusion? examines Walmart’s food sourcing strategies in two markets — China and Nicaragua — to draw lessons for governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and companies trying to meet the growing demand for food from rapidly growing urban populations.
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Campaigners for action on food waste have had much to celebrate recently. The Rockefeller Foundation launched YieldWise, a $130 million initiative to tackle loss between farm and market and demonstrating how the world can halve food loss by 2030. This coincided with the launch of Champions 12.3, a collaboration of 30 executives and ministers united in their dedication to meeting SDG target 12.3.
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Farmers in the United States could soon benefit from two new ways to increase crop yield that were announced this month.CropClimate is the latest use of big data to benefit agriculture. The web platform uses climate-, soil- and crop-modeling to link the effects of environmental conditions, weather and crop yield history and field management to develop more resilient crop production systems, reports Environmental Leader.
COLLABORATION -
Malnutrition remains a significant global problem despite corporate and charitable efforts to fight it. Malnourishment results in the deaths of an estimated 2.6 million children each year – about a third of global child deaths. An estimated 221 million people in India are chronically or acutely malnourished – over 17 percent of the country’s population. Nearly half of children in India are underweight and/or are too small for their age.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
In the past two years, over 300 filmmakers from around the world have entered the Real Food Media Contest — the world’s largest competition for short films on food, farming and sustainability. This fall, Real Food Media launched its third-annual Contest year with a call for submissions of super-short films on underreported issues, unique changemakers and creative solutions to foster a broad, public conversation about solving our global food system’s most intractable problems — from hunger to diet-related illnesses to environmental crises.
BLOG -
Sustainable products geeks rejoice, for 'tis once again the season of giving! And what better way to celebrate and participate than with gifts whose giving creates exponentially more cheer, health, beauty and financial stability while eliminating waste, pollution and carbon emissions around the world? Here are just a few of our favorite discoveries this year of products we'd be proud to give.
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Upcycling is a great way to use waste to create new products and take the world one step closer to a circular economy. These companies are some of the latest to creatively incorporate the practice to optimize products while utilizing a variety of waste streams.
COLLABORATION -
As evidenced by the unprecedented private-sector engagement in COP21 earlier this month, businesses globally get that they need to innovate (and improve!) their products, services and business models to combat climate change, resource scarcity and unpredictable futures. Aside from the alignment of 195 nations on a climate-action agreement, what did all the talk at COP21 amount to from a business perspective? A lot of initiatives that push forward change and collaboration. But is it all smoke and mirrors, and toothless pledges, or is there real action brewing?
COLLABORATION -
Conservation International (CI), in partnership with Ceres and industry leaders such as Starbucks and Keurig Green Mountain, have announced a call to action to make coffee the first sustainably sourced agricultural product in the world.
The Sustainable Coffee Challenge, launched last week at COP21 in Paris, comes as ministers gather to write a new climate agreement and as momentum builds for businesses to take direct action to combat climate change.
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A penguin and a cow walk into a bar. The cow says, "We have a problem. Every year cows emit so much methane into the atmosphere - the equivalent of fifty-times more CO2 than the entire country of Switzerland! It's killing our image. We don't know what to do." The penguin pondered for a moment and replied, "Maybe it's something you ate."
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Danone, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and Unilever continue to lead the corporate sector in making and living up to zero-deforestation commitments, but many firms have yet to make public sustainability commitments, according to a new ranking by the Global Canopy Programme.
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Global food security is all about sourcing enough protein, on a genuinely sustainable basis, for a population in excess of nine billion people in the second half of this century.
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On Monday, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), the world’s second-largest palm oil producer, launched a peatland rehabilitation project in Indonesia and committed to 100 percent traceability to mill by the end of 2015.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Here in Idaho, we’re the number one barley-producing US state. But how much of that barley (and the profits from it) remains in the state, or even in the region?This is the type of question advocates for sustainability ask. We want to buy local and help sustain our local businesses. We want fresh farm produce delivered to our local businesses—such as Co-ops—where we buy the produce and help these farmers grow more crops. The local business profits, the farmer profits, and hopefully, our health is bolstered by environmentally conscious growing practices the farmer employs.At first blush this might not be obvious, but the barley question is a big deal. Here’s why:
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Fires are raging across the 3,000 mile length of Indonesia, destroying tens of thousands of acres of forest. More than 127,000 forest fires have been detected so far this year, which is expected to be the worst on record. Visibility in some cities has been reduced to 30 yards by noxious orange haze. There have been more than 500,000 cases of acute respiratory illness and at least 19 deaths.