PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
What do Organic Valley, Target, REI and Toyota have in common? They are what Freya WIlliams describes as “Green Giants,” companies that have turned sustainability into billion-dollar businesses, and they are not alone.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
From the mudlets of the Mekong delta to the Fjords of Norway, the past five years have seen sustainable seafood flourish. This is partly due to certified fisheries, which have delivered measureable, positive impacts in the oceans. While uncertified stocks have struggled with greater variability in terms of biomass and fishing pressure, stocks certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) have increased in abundance even as demand for sustainable seafood increased.
WASTE NOT -
Farmers in Uganda are bringing new meaning to the phrase ‘cut your losses.’ While European and North American countries are fighting food waste largely caused by excess, African countries face additional food loss and waste challenges due to lack of infrastructure, affordable transportation, and even harvesting techniques. Food that is grown cannot always reach the nations’ hungry, or the hungry simply cannot afford it.
COLLABORATION -
Cacao beans grow best in the places where chocolate would melt in your hands, but over the next several decades, many of those environments may grow warmer, drier, and less suitable for its cultivation. While cacao can be grown in warmer places than coffee, cacao thrives in humid environments. As temperatures rise, so will evaporation, and projections suggest that there will not be enough increased rainfall to offset the moisture loss.
WASTE NOT -
Award-winning chefs from across the country, including ‘Top Chef’ head judge Tom Colicchio, gathered in Washington, D.C. on May 25 to advocate for food waste reduction in the American food system. In hopes of educating lawmakers on the severity of the issue, the group met with 22 Senate and House offices in tandem with a first-of-its-kind House Agriculture Full Committee hearing assessing food waste from farm to table.
PRESS RELEASE -
With the opening of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Nestlé has announced the finalists for the
Creating Shared Value [CSV] Prize 2016:
Natural Extracts Industries [NEI]
from Tanzania and
Agro-Hub
from Cameroun. After four screening phases, the two finalists were selected from a group of 450 applicants by the Nestlé CSV Council, along with 9 independent experts and 9 Nestlé internal experts.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Genetically engineered crops may be completely safe for human consumption – but they also are an unlikely solution to world hunger. A comprehensive new analysis found that genetically engineered (GE) crops, often called genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or biotech crops, do not appear to pose health risks, nor have they accelerated increases in yield.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
According to the USDA, consumer demand for organic foods has grown by double-digits every year since the 1990s — but organic acreage has not kept up. Today, only about one percent of US farmland is organic and farmers looking to transition to organic face real barriers, including shouldering financial uncertainty during the three year transition period required to be eligible for USDA Organic certification.
COLLABORATION -
Cotton is planted on 2.4 percent of the world’s crop land and yet it accounts for 24 percent and 11 percent of the global sales of insecticide and pesticides, respectively. Organic cotton represents less than 1 percent of the global total annual crop, but National Geographic, international clothing brand C&A, and activist and filmmaker Alexandra Cousteau believe that needs to change.
COLLABORATION -
More than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities and this is expected to reach 66 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations, when 2.5 billion people will be added to urban populations — with close to 90 percent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa.
In the fight against climate change, cities represent the greatest challenge and opportunity — while they generate a vast majority (70 percent) of global greenhouse gas emissions, those who live in them actually have smaller carbon footprints than the national averages.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
TerraVia (formerly Solazyme) and agribusiness giant Bunge Limited have announced the launch of native, whole algae DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) as a sustainable specialty feed ingredient for the aquaculture market, a roughly $3 billion market for omega-3 ingredients. DHA is a long chain omega-3 fatty acid that is a critical element for humans and animals, including fish, for healthy growth and development.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
AkzoNobel and agro-industrial cooperative Royal Cosun have partnered to develop novel products from cellulose side streams resulting from sugar beet processing.
The partnership will combine Royal Cosun's specialist knowledge in separating and purifying agricultural process side streams with AkzoNobel's expertise in the chemical modification of cellulose.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Robots farmers; intelligent crop monitoring; vertical city farms; algae- or lupine-based ingredients; and sustainable methods for growing, nutrient extraction and waste valorization – if the latest crop of F&A Next finalists is any indication, all of these could be revolutionary new components of our food and agriculture systems in the near future.
COLLABORATION -
An estimated 3,300 acres on oat farms that supply oats for Honey Nut Cheerios will soon provide new dedicated, flower-rich habitat for pollinators. General Mills is partnering with the Xerces Society, a pollinator and wildlife conservation organization, to plant wildflowers on the supplier farms by the end of 2020.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Do Europeans have unreasonable expectations for the agriculture industry? New poll results suggest that 91 percent of consumers think food should remain affordable, but just 54 percent think that farmers should be able to use pesticides to keep prices down.
CLEANTECH -
Late last year, devastating fires engulfed 2 million hectares of land in Indonesia, impacting the health of 43 million people around Southeast Asia, and emitting as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as Brazil does in a year. They were driven by years of rampant, unregulated deforestation, chiefly for the expansion of paper pulp and oil palm plantations.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
One of the world’s largest palm oil companies, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), has published a 4-year plan to trace its entire supply to the growers’ plantations. Earlier this year, GAR mapped its entire supply chain to 489 individual mills, and plans to build on that progress by achieving 100 percent traceability to plantation for all of the palm oil purchased and processed by the company by 2020.
CLEANTECH -
This week, both the World Resources Institute (WRI) and MorningStar Farms — producer of veggie burgers, sausages and other faux meat items beloved by vegetarians across the U.S. — have unveiled research asserting that the average American could cut their diet-related environmental impacts by nearly half just by eating less meat and dairy.
WASTE NOT -
Fetzer Vineyards, a leader in regenerative winegrowing, is revolutionizing the way U.S. wineries conserve water, announcing today that it will install the BioFiltro BIDA® System at its Mendocino winery. In doing so, Fetzer — a certified B Corp — will become the first American winery to use the closed-loop biological wastewater treatment system to process 100 percent of its winery wastewater.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Six years after NGOs released a scathing report on Malaysian palm oil producer IOI Group, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) decided to suspend IOI last Monday.