2021 Year in Review
Overview
The good food and ag space was hot in 2021 as businesses, NGOs, philanthropy, and government actors all worked to wrap their arms around how to improve our food system. GrowWell grew rapidly to help support these efforts with an array of research, analyses, and strategy development products. We had the honor of supporting more than a dozen ambitious organizations working to improve everything from social outcomes in the seafood sector, to food safety in the produce and baby food industries, to climate and water performance of both individual food and ag businesses and of broader geographical regions. In each of these engagements, we enjoyed engaging with our clients and their stakeholders to understand the landscapes they operate in, and what strategies, tactics, and data would best serve their needs and move them forward in meeting their higher order outcome goals. We’re happy to take a moment now to reflect back on some 2021 highlights and look ahead at what’s already underway or on the horizon for 2022.
Climate - Getting to Implementable and Meaningful Scope 3 Action at Several Scales
2021 Brought a much needed re-focusing of attention on climate change action. In the U.S., NOAA documented $145B in damages from 20 weather/climate disaster events that also killed 688 Americans, the third most expensive year on record. It is sobering to consider this growing toll. It has increased from 2.9 disasters per year in the ‘80s to 20 last year and from from 287 deaths to 688, not to mention the cost increase from $19B to $145B. The era of climate change is here, so it felt good to be able to continue to put both the biogeochemistry PhD and my supply chain management experience to use with businesses and their NGO partners working to understand what type of climate commitments they could make, and then how to achieve these critical emissions reductions. We had so much of this work this year, I was excited to be able to bring some additional experts in to contribute. Dr. Jacob Lum, poultry nutritionist, and Dr. Jacob Lum, poultry nutritionist, and some external corporate GHG accounting expertise were both added value on multiple projects this last year. I was incredibly grateful to both as we toggled between scales ranging from barns and companies to countries and continents to develop meaningful and actionable plans and guidance for our clients. We remain engaged with clients in this space, as well as through actively developing feedback on the recently released SBTi FLAG sector guidance. Lastly, Alison began a 3-year term serving on the National Academies’ Committee to advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) where she’s been excited to learn and lend her experience to advancing their mission to “assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”
Insights - Distilling Data from Corporate Financial and ESG Disclosures
The fall brought several opportunities to dive into dozens of food and ag businesses annual reports, investor presentations, and CDP water and climate reporting. Clients each brought a range of different questions, but all sought to understand where these companies were and what their outlook was for progress. While it has been heartening to see the groundswell of Science-based targets and other types of environmental and social outcome commitments in recent years, clarifying where companies are beyond those commitments can sometimes be more challenging. We enjoyed not just helping our clients understand where there were gaps, but also where there were opportunities to shift approach or support to better enable progress and accountability in this space. This work was also abundant enough that I was to be able to work again with ag economist, Michelle Klieger of Helianth Partners and ag researcher and author, Sarah Mock on a couple of these fun sleuthing projects to dive under the hood of key industry actors and help clients understand what they have actually done.
Traceability - Working Toward Sustainability across Supply Chains
Sustainability means different things to different groups. Some are very focused on food safety, climate or water outcomes. Others care about ensuring equity across their supply chains and rooting out forced labor. From tuna in the Philippines, to kombucha in Western Australia, to numerous businesses operating in North and South America; there were lots of late night zoom calls and exciting opportunities to learn how much common ground there is between such diverse geographies. Regardless of the outcome of interest, all these entities shared struggles with capturing and sharing necessary data elements across increasingly long and complex supply chains. Interoperable traceability that allows business partners to execute this data capturing and sharing process has come a long way in recent years, especially on the technical capacity side. However, in work for the Institute of Food Technologist’s Global Food Traceability Center, it is obvious there is still critical work to be done on the regulatory and cultural fronts to further advance adoption. In the U.S. there were many heartening advances in policy and regulatory dialogue that may spur further implementation to meet food safety, e-commerce, and organic certification integrity use cases. We were pleased to support advancement of this dialogue through IFT’s regulatory comment development on the Proposed Food Traceability Rule, NOSB’s call for input on enhancing organic integrity, and smarter food safety for e-commerce. Beyond this U.S.-based work, it was also great to contribute to understanding these challenges in the Australian context with GS1 Australia and businesses operating across Western Australia, and understand remaining barriers to uptake in a yellowfin tuna fishery in the Philippines published in January in the journal Sustainability.
Looking Ahead
Long-time client, The Common Market, was recently awarded a Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) for their work building sustainable food systems in the Southeast. We were excited to support them through their application and join them as a subcontract to help them advance their sustainability and impact over the next two years in partnership with the awesome Bill Green, Sanjay Kharod, Rachel Terry, Neil Ringerman, as well as other staff and suppliers.
We also look forward to continuing our climate work this coming year, recognizing the building momentum and opportunities in this space, like the USDA’s new $1B Climate Smart Commodities program announced this week. We also look forward to continuing to support the businesses and NGOs we’ve worked with over the last few years on their implementation and scaling journeys.
