Sustainability certification could start with EFP: report
Thursday, October 3, 2013
by MATT MCINTOSH
A recent study says market demands for sustainably produced food could be met with Ontario’s Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) but for the concept to work farmers have to be willing to share information about their operations with retailers and food processors.
Released by the Guelph-based George Morris Centre in mid-September, the report titled “Potential Role of the EFP in Responding to Sustainability Demands of the Agri-food Supply Chain” says the plan already promotes farming practices that retailers and food processors are looking for, but remains unknown to many.
Consequently, the report says that educating retailers and processors on how the EFP works, and what it means for farmers, is very important.
“The EFP is a voluntary, confidential, and widely accepted program that helps farmers reduce the risks their operation might pose to the environment. Setting up an individual EFP takes a lot of time; it involves a lot of paperwork, and workshops” says Harold Rudy, executive director at the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association. “Downstream customers will have a better idea of where to get relevant information once they are more aware of what the EFP is.”
But explaining the EFP to retailers and processors is not enough, the report says. Food processors and retailers would need to know specific details about farmers’ operations; these are currently confidential under the voluntary program.
The report recommends revising the EFP to include a database with a “customer-specific or standard-specific” add-on program, which would allow those interested to look up sustainability measures. This database could then work in conjunction with the original confidential program, meaning producers can still participate voluntarily.
Such a database could clarify and standardize what is meant by sustainability, the report says.
Currently, retailers and food processors can form differing ideas on sustainability, the report says. One company, for instance, might see sustainability strictly as soil conservation, while another may only focus on insecticide free crops.
“Adhering to different standards or ideas on sustainability is a problem for the industry,” says Al Mussell, one of the George Morris Center’s senior research associates. “Varying ideas can actually put up barriers to producers in the market, and I’m very concerned that standards will be created in an office, and simply fired back down the line to producers.”
However, releasing information on the practices of individual operations that would be useful to those farther along the production chain is more difficult for some farm products.
Grains, for instance, go through a long supply chain before they reach the retailer’s shelves, creating what the report calls a “natural gap” between the consumer and the producer. At this point, retailers may want to know where the item came from or how it was produced, but such information may not be readily available because they may not know who to ask.
Consequently, the report says creating new definitions of and meeting market demands for sustainability may be more easily accomplished in a short supply chain industry.
Horticulture, for example, is noted as one such industry, and the report cites it as the best sector to begin a pilot project that connects retailers directly with the farms producing their sale items.
In this case, a specific retailer or manufacturer would identify what they require of the producer, and the producer would release all information relating to that requirement from their pre-existing EFP. This litmus test, the report says, will highlight where the EFP can find a reasonable definition of sustainability.
Ontario’s EFP is a central part of federal provincial Growing Forward initiative, which is currently in its second phase. BF