“It’s a small but meaningful step,” says Lori Stahlbrand, the co-developer behind the first four-year honours bachelor program of its kind in Canada. “[We] are trying to move the needle on sustainability in any way that we can. Food is such a big part of this.”

The world’s food systems are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Most of that comes from agriculture, land use and changes in land use, the FAO says, with 39% attributed to processes, including the use of fertilizers. Methane from livestock and rice cultivation accounts for another 35%. But food can also be a way forward, Stahlbrand says. Certified organic food is grown without pesticides or fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers.

“We know that young people are experiencing high levels of eco-anxiety, defined as a chronic fear of environmental doom,” says Stahlbrand, who teaches the program’s Introduction to Food Movements. The process of getting the organic designation gave them hands-on experience and a closer understanding of the local food industry.

“These students are going to be some of the leaders of tomorrow,” Stahlbrand says. “They might be working at food non-profits, as policy advisors, as chefs, as managers in a restaurant. So it’s important to prepare them to operationalize meaningful change in the food sector.”

Through collaborating with the Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts and local vendors, students were able to increase the amount of certified organic food in more than 300 culinary arts classes every week beginning in March 2023.

[We] are trying to move the needle on sustainability in any way that we can. Food is such a big part of this.

 

– Lori Stahlbrand, George Brown College food studies program co-developer

The program’s operations manager, Joey Ma, says that roughly 10% of the produce purchases have been organic since the initiative began. The program has purchased more than 5,000 pounds of organic produce, including herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, pineapple and onions.

Second-year student Ronna Manalo says the goal was to “purchase as much local food as possible” while also working with the school’s budget, understanding which distributors could produce enough volume for a large institution, and addressing the culinary program’s needs. “It was a lot of communication back and forth for an entire semester,” she says.

Nova Scotia’s Acadia University was the first school to achieve the organic designation. Since then, several other schools, including Queen’s University, have been in talks with COTA to see how they could also achieve Organic Campus status, says Tia Loftsgard, COTA’s executive director. For Loftsgard, having a school go organic carries significant weight. “Youth are the future and want to make sustainable changes. Organic is the root to that change,” she says.

Ramona Leitao is a freelance multimedia journalist based in Toronto.

The post Top Chef: How George Brown’s prestigious chef school went organic appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Wilms, a former IBM exec and chair of the Calgary Police Commission, and one of his partners had launched an LED lighting business when they decided to scope out the lighting booths at a cannabis convention. That’s when they got the bright idea to get into the cannabis business free of chemical pesticides and powered by LEDs instead of the searing high-pressure sodium lights singled out for ravenously consuming anywhere from 1 to 3% of the American grid (data is sketchy in Canada).

The Green Organic Dutchman is so far one of only a handful of companies in Canada licensed to produce certified organic cannabis. But the publicly traded firm is part a budding movement among cannabis companies trying to prove to investors, as well as customers, that they’re taking sustainability seriously, and that delivering greener pot will grow their bottom line.

In the nine months since the sector was officially un-cuffed, more and more cannabis companies have been coming out of the shadows of indoor grow-ops and capitalizing on free solar energy with hybrid greenhouses to cut energy use and curb costs. Companies like TGOD, Hexo, and even larger players like Aurora and Canopy Growth are shifting to high-tech, walled-in, glass-roofed greenhouses, as are brands explicitly promoted as “sungrown,” like Tantalus Labs and Aphria’s Solei.

Grow your pot in a greenhouse and you’ll use up to 90% less electricity than the old school indoor variety. This means significant greenhouse gas (GHG) savings for those with grow-ops in, say, Alberta (like Aurora and Canopy), whose grid is nearly 50% coal. And while Canada was recently accused of blowing its chance to be the world’s pot leader, BC and Quebec’s clean hydro-dominated grids could help us become a global centre for low-carbon cannabis.

Graphic from Tantaluslabs.com

One way or another, it looks like the sungrown label is on track to be the next “grass-fed” or “cage-free.” There’s a Certified SunGrown seal emerging out of California. The International Cannabis Farmers Association, Cannabis Conservancy and Certified Kind have come together to create the Sun+Earth certification (funded by Dr. Bronner’s soap company). Sun+Earth certifies small scale craft cannabis grown entirely outdoors by fairly-paid farmers (mostly in California, for now). 48North’s Ontario-based Good Farm brand will be Canada’s first licensed cannabis producer that’s both field-grown and organic.

Organic or not, it’s fair to say much of Canada’s legal cannabis sector has been heavily focused on ramping up supply. But in the frenzy to deliver masses of pot and quell investor impatience, most cannabis corporations haven’t put much thought into tracking, disclosing and bettering the ESG (environmental, social and governance) indicators that are the norm in virtually every other corporate sector. Dig around for the kind of detailed corporate social responsibility and sustainability reports you’d even find on oil industry websites and you’ll be left wanting. At best, canna companies are coughing up blurbs here and there.

“We’re a little bit like awkward teenagers,” Aphria’s chief legal officer,  Christelle Gedeon told IdeaCity conference-goers in Toronto last month. “There’s some cost to growing up as teenager in front of world.”

Aphria should know. The Leamington, Ontario-based cannabis company became the poster-child for poor governance (the G in ESG) in late 2018 when it was accused of insider short-selling. Earlier this week, Vaughan, Ontario-based CannTrust acknowledged it hid unlicensed growing rooms from Health Canada. In 2016 and early 2017, OrganiGram, Aurora and a Canopy subsidiary recalled certified organic medical cannabis tainted with illegal pesticides. Since then, class action lawsuits seeking millions in damages have been launched against all three companies.

Fresh polling of 600 pensions, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds with US$21.5 trillion in assets around the globe has made it pretty clear that the majority of large investors see putting money into companies that ignore environmental, social, and governance indicators as a material risk to their portfolios.

The message to rapidly expanding cannabis corporations is loud and clear: if you want more of our green, you’d better show us how green you are.

Last month, a group called the Global Cannabis Partnership (45 cannabis-involved companies including TGOD, Aphria, Canopy, Hexo) released a Responsible Cannabis Framework that sets up basic corporate social responsibility standards for its members. It doesn’t offer guidance on hot button issues like plastic packaging (which is mostly non-recyclable) or fair wages, but it does require that members track and disclose their GHGs, as well as develop ethical codes of conduct, the way, say, the apparel sector started doing way back in the 90s.

Hexo’s glass-roofed greenhouse in Gatineau, Quebec

“Other sectors developed these types of standards after child labour scandals, explosions [at factories] in other countries or people chaining themselves to trees,” says framework author Rick Peterson. “This is the very first industry ever to commit to getting good corporate citizenship right out of the gates.”

Well, not quite right out of the gates. ESG-rating firm Sustainalytics took a first look at the budding industry’s ESG considerations in a report released last July scoring Canada’s four biggest cannabis producers. Most of the companies scored zero.

Sustainalytics research manager, Martin Vezér, admits the industry is in its infancy but says, “We have high expectations. Some of them are expanding from the medical market into the recreational market, and the medical market should have already been working on some of these factors such as governance and disclosing information about environmental management and pesticides.”

In signing onto the framework, members have a year to start tracking and disclosing that data and, if they choose, get accredited. Several Canadian pot firms are also in the midst of seeking accreditation through the Colorado- and Nelson-B.C.-based Cannabis Conservancy, which does energy, waste, land use and pesticide audits before doling out its Simply Eco seal.

“The cannabis sector is growing rapidly, and with that growth comes the privilege of being able to demonstrate to the world that we can be responsible to our physical and social environments while providing world class products to consumers,” says Hexo’s VP of corporate social responsibility, Terry Lake, who also happens to be B.C.’s former environment minister. This spring, the company harvested the first plants from its million-square-foot glass-topped greenhouse in Gatineau. It’s piloting LED lights in a portion of that hydro-powered greenhouse, which also gets 40% of its water from captured rain and recycled H20.

At a time when even conventional players are trying to green their game to curb costs and court investors, which cannabis companies are going the extra green mile? Check out our roundup below.

The other million-dollar question is whether Canadian consumers will fork out for greener bud the way they have for organic foods. Research from Hill+Knowlton found 57% of medical patients would prefer organic cannabis, but what about recreational users? The survey found 43% of recreational users had the same preference. The trouble is so far, organic cannabis can still be hard to find.  Search for “organic” in the provincially-run online cannabis stores in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta and no buds come up (odd, considering the Ontario Cannabis Store carries Whistler Cannabis’ organic products). And when you do find them, organic strains can clock in at up to twice the price. Though Rubicon Organics and Green Farm say they’ll deliver organic marijuana for less.

And with some tokers falsely assuming that all weed is eco-friendly (blame it on hemp fabric’s sustainable rep), greener brands, no doubt, have an uphill education battle ahead of them.

Either way, TGOD’s Wilms says sustainability will be critical to the sector’s long-term health, especially if it’s serious about risk management. “If you’re not doing this in a sustainable manner,” Wilms affirms, “you won’t be successful.”

CANADA’S GREENEST CANNABIS COMPANIES

Here’s a roundup of some of the most eco-friendly pot producers in Canada. Since electricity is a main ingredient in most cannabis in this country, we calculated what percentage of each company’s grid is considered renewable. Note that the federal ‘Canada Organic’ label won’t be appearing on cannabis products anytime soon, since use of that red, green and black logo is still restricted to food.

Whistler Cannabis Co. (Aurora)

Maybe it’s no surprise that Canada’s first certified organic producer was born in B.C. Whistler started as an organic medical marijuana producer five years ago and in January 2019 the company was purchased by Canada’s third largest cannabis producer, Aurora, for a cool $175 million. All of which may help to explain why, so far, this established player is the only organic weed available at the Ontario Cannabis Store, though note the retail price is $20/gram (it’s $2 cheaper in B.C.).

Clean grid:  95%

Organic: 100%

Good Farm (48North)

Canada’s first licensed open-air pot crop is not just grown organically — it also happens to be led by women.  Last fall, 48North purchased Good & Green (now Good Farm) and both companies had female CEOs (now co-CEOs), including one of the co-founders of The Green Organic Dutchman Jeannette VanderMarel. The 100-acre property in Brant County, Ontario plans to deliver 40,000 kg of organic, sun-grown, outdoor cannabis a year. Like Rubicon, 48North promises low-cost organics, with cultivating costs pegged at $0.25 per gram (well below indoor operations). No word on expected retail price but it should be in stores in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta by Christmas.

Clean grid:  100% (outdoor)

Organic: 100% (the fields have been certified but the final product has yet to be)

Tantalus Labs

This privately held Vancouver-based company has been called the Tesla of cannabis. Founder Dan Sutton has said he’s “leading a cultural revolution in sustainable cannabis cultivation” and is pushing the sungrown label as the future of pot. Tantalus’ SunLab uses mostly, what else, natural sunlight and exclusively recaptured rainwater in its greenhouse in B.C.. It’s not certified organic, though the company says it doesn’t use chemical inputs to treat mildew or pests (would be great to see third-party certification here). Available in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. Starting price $15/gram.

Clean grid: 95%

Organic: –

Green Relief

Green Relief’s blue tanks are filled with tilapia, whose waste is siphoned to fertilize thousands of cannabis plant roots.

This Hamilton-based company says it’s the world’s only licensed cannabis producer using aquaponics—a closed loop system where essentially 6,000 tilapia keep the roots of 4,500 pot plants fertilized at a time in an LED-lit underground bunker. Green Relief’s system claims to produce 10 times the crop yield per acre and uses 90% less water than conventional farming. Every month, a few hundred fish are donated to local homeless shelters through Second Harvest. At this point, its plants are only for the medical market. Not organic, but word is some certified organic options may be in the works, as are new facilities in Thunder Bay and Nova Scotia. It also plans to go public later in 2019.

Clean grid: 37%

Organic: 0

Solei by Aphria

This mostly sungrown pot comes from Aphria’s greenhouse in Leamington, Ontario, supplemented by energy-saving LEDs. It has its own co-generation plant that produces electricity, plant growth-boosting CO2 and hot and cold water, trimming Solei’s carbon footprint. Solei makes no claims to be organic, but it does estimate that its operation uses 1/12  the power of other indoor grow ops. Like most big players, Aphria says it’ll firm up those numbers once it finishes monitoring the water, GHG and energy savings of its first year of operations.

Clean grid: 37%

Organic: 0

Rubicon Organics

Canada’s fourth certified organic licensed producer was founded by the guys who started Whistler Medical Marijuana Corporation. It’s got a 125,000 square foot facility running on B.C.’s clean hydro grid and another 40,000 square foot greenhouse in Washington State whose grid is 2/3 low-emission hydro and 1/3 fossil fuels. Rubicon Organics claims to have figured out how to produce organic cannabis in high-yield hybrid greenhouses at an ultra-low cost of $0.50/gram. (Rubicon compares that to Aphria, which has said it can deliver dried flowers for between $0.90 and $1.30, while selling grams for an average of about $9.)

Clean grid:  90%

Organic: 100%

The Green Organic Dutchman

This Ancaster-based company plans to be the largest licensed certified organic cannabis globally, particularly once its million square foot LEED-certified greenhouse in Valleyfield, Quebec is up and running on renewable hydro power later this year. Combined with a Blue Mountain, Jamaica-based grow-op and greenhouses in Poland and Denmark in the works, TGOD promises to deliver over 200,000 kg of organic cannabis a year. Right now, it’s only selling to medical consumers (in glass jars) but it will be launching its recreational products in Ontario in mid-August. (Full disclosure: my spouse insisted we use the puny stash of funds gathering dust in my tax-free savings account to start investing in green stocks and TGOD was the first stock he purchased for me as my unofficial kitchen table investor. Naturally, it’s been one of the most anemic pot stocks on the market to date, so don’t consider this investment advice.)

Clean grid:  37% (90 once Quebec facility comes online)

Organic: 100%

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Ian Wilms is a co-founder of TGOD. He is a founding partner of TGOD Holdings Ltd, which purchased TGOD from Jeannette VanderMarel and Scott Skinner in 2016.

The post The greening of pot: Can power-hungry cannabis sector turn over a new leaf? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

These decisions carry even more weight for sustainable procurement professionals. Businesses are under increasing pressure to manage environmental impacts across their supply chains. Growing public scrutiny has pushed corporate environmentalism from the margins to the mainstream of business practices in recent years. Done credibly, corporate environmentalism can help attract new customers and retain old ones. Done superficially, it can do lasting damage to a company’s brand through accusations of “greenwash.”

This was the case for SC Johnson when they put a stem and leaf logo on certain household cleaning products around 2008. The logo proclaimed “Greenlist Ingredients – Same Great Product!” Three years later, the company was forced to withdraw the label and settle two class action lawsuits for undisclosed amounts. Plaintiffs in the cases successfully argued that the Greenlist label was vague and denoted few discernible environmental benefits. While the little stem and leaf looked like a credible eco-label, as it turns out, it was concocted by SC Johnson employees for marketing purposes.

The SC Johnson example illustrates the perils of a going-it-alone approach to eco-labeling. It is for this reason that businesses are increasingly turning to independent, third party standard-setters to help them set and enforce environmental rules along their supply chains. Third party standard-setters craft rules that transcend borders and steer the behaviour of billions of producers around the world. Political scientists refer to them as a form of “transnational governance” inasmuch as they have power, authority and legitimacy that resembles that of international organizations like the United Nations. Moreover, they hold the potential to achieve results when international negotiations remain mired in gridlock. By some estimates, if just 10% of agricultural production complied with rules outlined in voluntary sustainability standards, some of the worst environmental impacts of agricultural production could be avoided.

Yet, for companies looking to bolster their environmental credentials, choosing the right eco-label is far from a straightforward task. The world of eco-labeling is a veritable Wild West where any cowboy with a graphic design program can make a label proclaiming a product to be environmentally friendly. Even some third party standard-setters have come under scrutiny in recent years for setting the bar too low or having poorly designed standard-setting and enforcement systems.

So how can consumers and sustainability professionals separate real environmental claims from fake ones? This is a question I tackle in my new book, Beyond Greenwash. The bad news is that it isn’t as simple as looking at environmental impacts. Deforestation rates may fall and biodiversity rates may rebound, but it is very difficult to isolate the impact of eco-labeling from other variables that might be driving these changes. A more productive approach is to focus on how eco-labels are designed, built, and managed. This has the added value of allowing a common basis for comparison across different types of eco-labels, sectors, and issue-areas. Generally speaking, there are a few characteristics that consumers and companies can look for when selecting a credible eco-label.

Is it independent?

Consumers and procurement professionals should be wary of any self-awarded eco-label. Look for labels that originate from a credible, third-party organization. There should also be independence between the organization that sets the standard and the organization that audits compliance against its criteria. This is important for preventing a conflict of interest. Standard-setters generally receive revenues based on how widely their eco-labels are used. An eco-labeling organization that checks compliance against its own standard has an incentive to overlook non-compliances and set a lower bar for achievement.

How inclusive is it?

The most credible eco-labels are the ones that are developed with close participation from all relevant stakeholders. If an eco-label promotes sustainable coffee production, then it should involve coffee farmers, scientists, processers, NGOs, and community members (amongst others) in standard-setting. Sometimes, stakeholders will lack the means to attend important meetings. In these cases, it is incumbent on the standard-setter to set aside funds to help marginalized stakeholders participate in a meaningful way. Bringing lots of stakeholders to the table is the best way of ensuring that an eco-label is relevant to local conditions, sets the bar appropriately high, and avoids privileging some interests over others.

How transparent is the label?

As a general rule of thumb, credible eco-labels have well-maintained websites. Any interested member of the public should be able to log on and find information about the eco-labeling standard, the process through which businesses become certified, the governance and funding of the eco-labeling organization, and the roster of firms that hold active or withdrawn certifications. Dubious eco-labels keep everything offline or hidden behind pay walls; credible eco-labels make their information freely available online.

Is the label committed to improvement?

Both consumers as well as companies shopping around for a credible eco-label should look for ones that monitor and evaluate their impacts and take steps towards continuous improvement. Often this can take the form of ‘impact reports’ that outline the progress an eco-labeling organization has made towards its sustainability objectives. Impact reporting should feed back into newer versions of eco-labeling standards so that there is a constant dialogue about what is working and what is not. Impact evaluation is a messy science, but credible eco-labels do their best to assess whether their approach is having the desired effect.

Granted, all of this may sound like a lot of work for choosing a cup of coffee.  The latest market research suggests that over one fourth of global coffee production is currently certified to one of five major eco-labels. Indeed, certified production is growing across nearly all sectors. There may soon come a day when most major commodities are produced in accordance with a sustainability standard. The bad news is that not all of these eco-labels will be credible. Thus, it has never been more important to understand what’s behind the little green frogs, blue angels, and white bunnies that festoon grocery store aisles. Digging into the rules and procedures of how eco-labels are made is the key to achieving durable environmental impacts and moving Beyond Greenwash.

Eco-Labels that Follow Best Practices

Coffee/Tea/Cocoa: UTZ Certified

Paper/Forest Products: Forest Stewardship Council

Seafood: Marine Stewardship Council

Sugarcane: Bonsucro

Carbon Emissions: Enviro-Mark Solutions

Fruits/Vegetables: Linking Environment and Farming (LEAF)

Hamish van der Ven is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Environment at McGill University and the author of Beyond Greenwash: Explaining Credibility in Transnational Eco-Labeling (Oxford University Press, 2019).

The post What’s in a label? Separating credible eco-labels from “greenwash” appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Klapwyk is careful to ensure that everything on this farm is done sustainably, not just to keep the soil in balance but so she and her farm team can keep humming along healthily, too. She’s the co-owner here at Zocalo Organics, an 83-acre property dotted with greenhouses, veggie gardens, hayfields, cedar forests and wetlands in Hillsburgh, an hour and a half north west of Toronto. And at 27, she’s one of the nation’s youngest farm operators, part of a burgeoning movement of female agriculturists in their 20s and 30s seeking to work the land differently, sustainably, ecologically.

Like 68 per cent of farmers recently surveyed by the National New Farmer Coalition, neither Klapwyk nor her husband had grown up milking cows or driving tractors. Klapwyk’s father has an aluminum siding business near Guelph. It took some online crowd-funding, a half a million dollar Young Farmer Loan from Farm Credit Canada and some parental help, but in 2014, Klapwyk and her husband scraped enough funds together to purchase the land off a retiring organic farmer – for about the price that other young couples are spending on a semi-detached home in the city.

Now, only two seasons in and Zocalo is already bringing in more money than the farmer that owned the property for 25 years prior. Like many in this growing crop of new and young female farmers, she learned how to work the land for high-value direct-to-consumer food by volunteering, interning and cooping on farms throughout Canada and the Americas after university. Zocalo is now selling certified organic veggies to over a dozen area restaurants (including Five Diamond-rated Langdon Hall) and a Rowe Farms butcher shop, as well as 100 some-odd “shareholders” (households that pay up front for a season of weekly produce boxes).

It’s no secret that the farming industry needs this fresh blood. StatsCan says the sector’s seen a staggering decline of farmers under 40, plummeting 75 per cent from 1991 to 2011. The average Canadian farmer now looks something like this: male, 54 (and counting), and running ever larger consolidated farms. Though last checked, there were 80,605 female farm operators in Canada in 2011, when the last national farm census was published. That’s still just 27.4 per cent of all farm operators – up one per cent from the previous decade. But there is one notable sunny patch: organic farming. Nearly a third of organic operators were female (in British Columbia that number jumped to 40 per cent) and, proportionally, there are more farm operators under 40 in organics, too.

Factor in the surge of women dominating organic farm apprenticeships and post-secondary agriculture programs nationwide and you can almost feel the bell curve bending. At University of Guelph’s Agricultural College, there were nearly 1,400 female students to just under 640 men enrolled in 2013. At the University of Alberta, at least six in 10 of those in ag sciences are women, according to faculty dean Stan Blade.

“Clearly there’s going to be a transition to the next generation,” says Blade. “Anecdotally, we see that it might have been exclusively males a generation ago. That’s not going to be the case.”

Sara Dent, the B.C. coordinator for Young Agrarians, a network of new and young ecological and organic farmers, says, “There’s this demographic going through university and coming out wondering what they can do to make a difference in the world and how they can actively do something that mitigates climate change.” Klapwyk had her “organic farming is the answer” epiphany while studying international development. Many come to it after environmental studies programs.

This new wave of farmers may fall under census radars since many aren’t yet in Klapwyk’s position and don’t have a fixed address. Says Dent, “They’re working in a more temporary environment to get the training and experience that they need to potentially become owner-operators down the road.

Christie Young founded FarmStart in 2005 to help that new generation of ecological farmers get the experience and training they need. At least half the people coming through the organization’s programs are women. But without farm families and a whack of capital backing them, getting into supply-managed commodity farming can be a challenge, particularly when you may have to shell out millions for quota. So they start small, often working in cooperatives or on incubator farms that rent out plots of up to a couple acres, sharing tractors, tools and mentors for up to five-year leases before those businesses find more permanent homes.

“They don’t necessarily want to buy into or be part of a big corporate farm business, which is where most commodity and conventional agriculture is going,” says Young. “Doing it differently, they tend to adopt more sustainable practices … more direct-marketed and shorter supply chains. You can get a better price for those kinds of products that would then allow you to farm differently.”

Genevieve Grossenbacher, a Montreal-raised vegan baker-turned nonprofit food security advocate and organic grower herself says she’s a prime example. “I fit the profile of the new face of new farmers.” Grossenbacher and her partner, however, had extra geographical luck. They started running their community-supported agriculture (CSA) food box from an incubator farm in a province that supports CSAs and young farmers perhaps more than any other. If you’re under 39, Quebec’s FIRA (fonds d’investissement pour la relève agricole) will buy the land of your choice and rent it out to you until you can buy it back, within 15 years.

It’s no coincidence that Quebec has more farm operators under 40 than any other province, despite massive drops in that demographic over the past few decades. It’s getting creative about fostering the next generation of new farmers, especially since so few farm kids have been coming home to roost.

Lydia Ryall had no interest in taking over her parents’ large conventional greenhouse tomato operation in B.C. At 31, she now runs Cropthorne Farm, 17 acres of certified organic mixed vegetables, selling such heirloom varieties as watermelon radishes and lemon cucumbers to half a dozen trendy farm-to-table Vancouver restaurants, 180 CSAs and four Vancouver farmers’ markets. When she won B.C.’s Outstanding Young Farmer award two years ago, she was the first solo farmer awarded in 25 years and the first female to win who wasn’t jointly nominated with her husband, even though B.C. has more exclusively women-run farms than anywhere else in the country.

“It still has its challenges. There’s been times where I’ve been at a tractor dealership and … they think I’m buying a tractor for my dad. Sales guys are a little bit surprised at first.”

That being said, the paradigm is shifting and Cropthorne clearly isn’t bound by gender constraints of farms past. Her husband (a wildlife coordinator at Vancouver International Airport) is currently on parental leave looking after their infant daughter while she manages the fields. “It’s really interesting because we totally switched gender roles in one sense from the traditional way. Right now, anyway.”

Still, while more young women may rule the roost on many smaller ecological farms, a study by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) found that women continue to face a “grass ceiling” throughout Canada’s broader agricultural sector. Says CAHRC project manager Debra Hauer, “We are finding that, yes, there is that final step that is a barrier to achieving senior management or executive roles in all aspects of agriculture.”

Orgs like the CAHRC, the National New Farmer Coalition, Young Agrarians, Women in Ag and FarmStart are working on knocking down those barriers, be it lack of affordable farmland or access to capital for new female farmers, or helping them break into the old boys club in farm and ag-related businesses.

Even with so many farm fences in the way, adds FarmStart’s Young, “I do believe women are going to lead that renewal.”

The post A taste of country: the rise of young, female farmers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Lindt. Nestlé. Toblerone. Villars. Frey. Favarger. Cailler. The list goes on. And in places such as Geneva, the chocolate isn’t just for eating. Several spas in the country let clients bathe in a bubbling tub of liquid chocolate, no doubt a sold out offering on Valentine’s Day.

Chocolate, quite simply, is at the heart of Switzerland’s international brand and reputation as a global commodities hub. The Swiss are the biggest per-capita chocolate eaters in the world, with each citizen consuming 12 kilograms of the treat annually – about the weight of a large cocker spaniel, and nearly twice as much as the average Canadian.

But the luxurious days of bathing in a plentiful pool of chocolate may be coming to an end if predictions of a global cocoa supply shortage within the next five years come true. Last fall, Swiss-based cocoa manufacturer Barry Callebaut warned of the potential crisis – a big deal, considering the company processes nearly a quarter of the world’s cocoa beans. Company chief executive Juergen Steinemann called it a “serious concern” for the $117 billion (U.S.) global industry.

Two years earlier, the world’s largest chocolate maker, Mars, sparked anxiety among chocolate lovers when it said the industry could face a million-tonne shortage of cocoa by 2020. It also drew attention to the economic and environmental pressures faced by cocoa farmers at a time when demand for chocolate, particularly in developing countries such as China, India and Russia, is expected to grow by 30 per cent within the same timeframe. “It’s just not sustainable,” the U.K. president of Mars said.

To be clear, it’s not like Valentine’s Day will come to a sobbing halt, or for that matter Easter – which by the way is the top-selling chocolate occasion. It means that as demand rises and supply struggles to keep up, the amount and quality of cocoa in what we call chocolate will decline, replaced by imitation fillers. Alternatively, the price of higher-quality chocolate is expected to rise sharply.

A need for sustainable approaches

Switzerland is an interesting case study when it comes to rethinking the way the chocolate industry operates and interacts with cocoa suppliers.

Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are the biggest cocoa suppliers in the world, representing 36 per cent and 22 per cent of global supply, respectively. They’re also the two biggest suppliers to Switzerland.

“Both face production bottlenecks that threaten cocoa exports in the coming years,” according to the Earth Security Index 2015, a report put out by London-based consultancy Earth Security Group.

“Swiss-based multinationals must go beyond traditional development and CSR approaches to think more creatively about business model innovations that will help smallholder farmers capture more value from the global chocolate market.”

There are many reasons for the bottlenecks in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. As Earth Security’s report points out, cocoa trees planted a quarter century ago have hit their production peaks and the land they grow on is no longer as fertile as it once was. “Without large-scale rehabilitation of land and trees production is likely to drop.”

Climate change is also taking its toll, and will continue to do so. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are affecting the availability of suitable land for growing cocoa trees and increasing the risk of disease.

The bottom line: it’s hard these days to farm cocoa, let alone eke out a living, with roughly 90 per cent of world supply grown on relatively small, family-owned plots. Most farmers are operating well below the line of poverty, forcing them to rely on child labour to lower costs. Alternatively, they abandon cocoa altogether in pursuit of more profitable crops, such as rubber or palm oil.

“Chronic poverty and poor labour conditions are driving an exodus from cocoa farming, just as a new generation of farmers must take the reins of production,” the report states.

The industry hasn’t been blind to these problems. In fact, it has taken some important actions. The largest 13 cocoa-dependent companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars on sustainability programs, and through an initiative called CocoaAction, have worked with the World Cocoa Foundation to support thousands of farmers.

But efforts so far don’t go far enough. This has many industry observers calling for more innovative approaches, which some smaller and newer chocolate makers are proving can work. London-based Divine Chocolate, for example, has emerged as a successful fair-trade chocolate company that shares ownership directly with the cocoa farmers it relies on.

The company was founded in 1998 as a partnership between Twin Trading, a U.K. fair trade company, and the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa farmer cooperative in Ghana. Cooperative members collectively owns 45 per cent of Divine Chocolate and, on top of being suppliers also get a dividend from the company’s profits. The company, which counts Body Shop among its investors, also devotes 2 per cent of its revenues to farmer education.

Earth Security says this kind of increased integration with farmers is proving so far to be a sustainable model that’s driving positive change in the industry. “However, in order to reach the needed scale, similar innovations must be replicated by the larger players in the industry.”

The value of certification 

For now, the approach to sustainable cocoa production – and specifically, to combat forced and child labour – has been through compliance with sustainability standards, which have experienced strong growth over the past few years. There are four major standards that dominate the cocoa market:

• The Rainforest Alliance Certified seal assures that the cocoa has been grown and harvested using environmentally and socially responsible practices.

• Fairtrade-certified cocoa assures that no forced or child labour is used by cocoa farms, no agrochemicals are used, and that farmers, through membership in a local cooperative, never get paid less than the minimum floor price for cocoa, which assures they make a profit and don’t get taken advantage of by intermediaries.

• Organic-certified cocoa must be produced using natural methods, meaning farmers must adhere to a regime of regular crop rotation that relies on manure fertilization. This assures growing soil remains healthy and productive. Needless to say, no synthetic or toxic pesticides are permitted.

• UTZ Certified farms must used responsible agricultural practices, have a safe and healthy work environment, never use child labour, and meet a minimum standard for environmental protection.

These voluntary sustainability standards first began to appear in the late 1980s, but started to build some serious momentum in the late 1990s. Growth is expected to build, given that major chocolate companies Hershey’s, Ferrero and Mars, together representing nearly half of the confectionary market, have said they will source all of their cocoa supply sustainably by 2020. Which standard they will adhere to, however, is unclear.

To date, the most successful has been the UTZ Certified standard, which represents nearly 15 per cent of the share of global cocoa production, followed by the Rainforest Alliance certification at about 10 per cent. Organic and Fairtrade are far less popular, both sitting at 3 per cent of global production. This is likely because of the higher premium they fetch for farmers. For example, the premium for UTZ Certified cocoa is around 5 per cent, compared to about 18 per cent for organic cocoa.

That said, both organic and Fairtrade cocoa have experienced rapid growth over the past few years. The International Institute for Sustainable Development predicts that Fairtrade certification will continue along this trend, “particularly in light of public commitments by Cadbury and Hershey’s to source Fairtrade cocoa in the coming years, which will likely lead to reductions in the gap between supply and demand in the coming decade,” according to its State of Sustainability Initiatives Review 2014.

Certification may not be a panacea, but industry watchers say it’s a laudable start, perhaps paving the way to more creative business models like that pioneered by Divine Chocolate. Other attempts at addressing a feared cocoa shortage involve genetically modifying cocoa plants to grow in harsher conditions, resist pests and disease and increase their yield.

This may be part of the answer, but beyond concerns about the safety and health issues related to GMO products, the bigger worry for chocolate makers and lovers is that these new super-variety of plants will produce inferior tasting chocolate, the same way GMO strawberries – while larger and more robust – tend to be flavourless and lacking in the rich redness of wild strawberries.

As you savour chocolate treats this Valentine’s Day, ask yourself: How much flavor are you willing to sacrifice? And how much more would you be willing to pay for sustainably grown cocoa and responsibly produced chocolate to satisfy your chocolate cravings?

One thing is for sure: bathing in chocolate in Geneva is going to get mighty expensive.

The post What is the future of chocolate? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Wine and beer are no exception. Both appeal to consumer appetites for local and authentic. In Canada, craft beer, made on a small scale and with natural local ingredients, is the fastest growing segment of the beer market and, as Canada’s relatively young wine industry extends its regional reach, a small but growing number of wineries are challenging themselves to produce organically.

Because the results taste good, it’s less a matter of twisting consumers’ arms to make responsible choices than simply giving them what they want. As Heather MacGregor, a spokeswoman for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, put it, “We respond to what our customers like and this market just continues to grow across the board, on both imports and domestic.” She’s referring to a fourfold increase in organic beer sales and a doubling in organic wine sales in the last four years.

Organic doesn’t capture the full breadth of sustainability which, in the realm of wine and beer, also encompasses energy efficiency in production and reduction in water use, packaging and transport. And while it may feel like a contemporary sensibility, it’s nothing new.

When two Bavarian dukes decreed on April 23, 1516, that the only allowable ingredients in beer were barley, hops and water, they were not really concerned about taste. The so-called Bavarian Purity Law, which gets flaunted on beer labels to this day, was in fact designed to stop brewers from pillaging local wheat and rye crops, a practice that was leading to bread shortages and even starvation, and to reduce illness from additives (whether this was more about consumer safety or protectionism from north German beers that featured weird and wonderful psychoactive herbs remains a matter of debate).

The decree also regulated prices (no more than a penny per litre) and defined the beer-making season (April 23 to September 29) in order to cut back on fires caused by brewing and spoilage for lack of cool storage in the summer months. Although no mention is made of yeast – integral to beer – it’s clear the ingredient was understood as earlier medieval documents regulate yeast-sharing protocols between brewers and bakers.

Efficient brewing

Today, the scant resource in beer-making is water and the energetic challenges are to heat efficiently, recapture heat loss and optimize water purification and bottle-cleaning. Elmira, Ontario-based environmental consulting firm Enviro-Stewards has specialized in beer and wine production. By reducing water and gas consumption, product losses and the use of caustics, wineries and breweries increase their output and minimize their loads on local water treatment facilities. Realizing this, and that reducing industrial water consumption is cheaper than digging more wells, several Canadian municipalities and public utilities have, in the last few years, begun to co-fund environmental assessments and refits.

The City of Guelph and Union Gas, for instance, helped Canadian brewer Sleemans to reduce its water and natural gas consumption by 8 per cent and 20 per cent respectively, boosting the brewery’s output and its bottom line by $330,000 a year, with an annual return on investment of over 100 per cent.

In Europe, Dutch beer giant Heineken has paired with the Austrian government in a “Green Brewery” project whose ultimate objective is carbon-neutral beer. Their pilot project at 500-year-old Göss brewery in southeastern Austria uses a combination of solar thermal systems and residual heat from a nearby sawmill for brewing. Almost all of the brewery’s waste heat is used to warm the municipal water supply and in the winter, outdoor air is used for cooling. External electricity used at the brewery, like all breweries in Austria’s Brau Union group (the country’s biggest beer conglomerate), is renewable.

Such ambitions may be more realizable and at a larger scale in a European context – where, for example, Austria is aiming for energy self-sufficiency by 2050 thanks to its extensive wind and hydropower. But Canadian breweries are making strides as well. One major shift here is towards local production.

When Steve Abrams, co-founder of Mill Street Brewery, decided to launch Ontario’s first organic beer in 2002, he had to import his organic hops from New Zealand and his organic malt from Germany, a painful contradiction for a local craft brewer. In the absence of a Canadian standard, he also had to turn to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for organic certification.

Twelve years later, Mill Street’s organic ale (one of the brewery’s more than 40 beers) accounts for 60 per cent of the company’s sales. The brewery is now one of over 30 craft breweries in Ontario and Abrams is able to source all his ingredients within the province.

Hops on the ups

The boom in craft breweries has, among other things, brought hops back to Ontario following a dry spell that Ontario Hop Growers’ Association vice-president Hugh Brown believes dates back to prohibition. Founded four years ago, his association now comprises roughly 30 commercial hops growers, up from “next to none” five years ago.

Most are producing organically and on a small scale but Brown believes that, given the high local demand, bigger commercial players are soon to enter the market. He sees Ontario’s beer industry undergoing what the province’s wine industry went through a decade ago – a move towards estate production, with ingredients being grown and processed on site, a situation where sustainable practice takes on greater immediacy.

Crannóg Ales, founded in 2000 in British Columbia’s interior, is one such on-farm brewery and the first in Canada to get organic certification. Crannóg brews 1.5 million litres annually: “minuscule” in the words of its co-founder Rebecca Kneen (craft brewery is anything below 40 million litres). For Kneen, who grew up on a farm, it “only made sense” to farm and brew on site. Crannóg grows its own organic hops, propagates its own yeasts, draws its own spring water and has its Prairie barley malted by a local maltster. All spent grains and waste water are used on the farm.

Having found no solar or wind systems practical for its scale of operation, Crannóg’s solution has been to keep its energy needs low by eliminating two of the most energy-intensive processes in beer-making: thermal pasteurization and bottling.

“Why spend so much attention on the ingredients if we’re just going to filter out the goodness and flavour?” asks Kneen. Being non-pasteurized, the beer can’t be sold through the liquor board, but Crannóg has a cult following locally and nobody complains that the beer is only available in kegs or “growlers” (which get cleaned and reused rather than recycled) or that it has to be stored cold because it’s “alive.”

Breaking tradition

Crannóg harbours no dreams of expansion beyond the B.C. border: “One important piece of sustainability is being content at a place of sufficiency,” says Kneen. “Constant growth isn’t necessarily sustainable. When things go industrial, they also become invisible.”

Bill Redelmeier, owner of Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, is something of a kindred spirit in the world of wine. Southbrook boasts biodynamic, organic and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certifications – making it unique in Canada.

Biodynamic takes organic farming to another level. Redelmeier, a third-generation farmer, dispenses with fungicides and pesticides, raises sheep for their manure and cultivates wild yeasts and moulds “right out of the sheep’s rear end.” He considers the difference between conventional and organic farming to be one of degree, whereas biodynamic farming is more one of kind. By tolerating low levels of infection in the vineyard, the grapes cultivate thick skins rich in tannins and bio-flavonoids and by using wild yeasts, fermentation takes longer and occurs in unique succession. “It’s the difference between a note and a chord,” he says referring to the taste, adding that Ontario’s two biodynamic wineries take home more than their share of national awards every year.

Redelmeier would like to see far more organic vineyards in Ontario, but understands that risk and expense are real obstacles for most grape growers. Organic vineyards typically yield less than half that of conventional ones and they’re more vulnerable to blights and weather irregularities. When taking the leap to organic, growers often look for advance purchasing commitments from wineries to protect themselves financially.

Nor is it universally agreed that organic is better. J-L Groux, winemaker at Stratus Vineyards, just down the road from Southbrook in Niagara-on-the-Lake, argues that organic doesn’t always correlate with quality or sustainability. Originally from the French Loire with wine-making experience on both continents, Groux talks about the downsides of organic production. Grapes need to be sprayed more often, he says, and that requires more fuel. There’s also the need to occasionally pick grapes prematurely to avoid disease, and in the past, organic sprays such as copper and sulphur have taken a toll on soils.

While not organic, Stratus believes deeply in sustainability, which Groux calls “the overall picture.” The winery, built in 2005, was the first building in Canada and the first winery in the world to get LEED certification – a distinction that applies to both its construction and ongoing operation. Groux talks about a “gentle on the earth” approach – which, along with no use of herbicides, includes largely natural pesticides, compost fertilizers, electro-magnetic sprayers rather than irrigation, bio-fuelled tractors and labour-intensive production that uses gravity rather than pumps. Because the parcels adjacent to Stratus are less than 30 feet away and farmed conventionally, the vineyard is not eligible for organic certification. But even if it were, Groux wouldn’t subject his wines to that corset. For him, the young, experimental culture of winemaking in Canada is what makes it more exciting than in the tradition-bound old world.

Taste trumps

For many winemakers like Groux, the term “sustainable” implies virtues rather than restrictions. California’s Sonoma County is embracing it whole hog, aiming to become America’s first 100 per cent sustainable wine region by 2019. Wine has a long tradition in Sonoma, its vineyards dating back to the 1820s and many still in family hands; it’s also big business, accounting for 60 per cent of the county’s GDP and one in three jobs.

According to Karissa Kruse, president of the Sonoma County Winegrowers, the body behind the sustainability initiative, it seems a logical step to make sure winemaking is sustainable. “The marketplace is going this way,” says Kruse. And she’s right. In its 2014 Culinary Forecast, the U.S. National Restaurant Association cited sustainability as the top trend in food and beverage for the coming decade.

While the initiative is completely voluntary, Kruse says that all of Sonoma’s 1,800 grape growers and almost half its 450 winemakers have opted in. And it’s not just a marketing ploy – the region’s susceptibility to drought makes optimal canopy management, drip irrigation and frost protection vital to survival.

Sustainable breweries and wineries, while growing, still represent a small slice of the total market, a position that seems to foster a healthy mix of solidarity and fierce competition. To expand their market share, they have to work together; to distinguish themselves within the small pack, they have to be creative. This leads to wonderful spinoffs – like the glass jewelry made from Stratus’ bottle shards or the blankets woven from Southbrook’s sheep clip – and community collaborations like Mill Street’s partnership with Earth Day Canada, or eastern Ontario craft brewer Beau’s hiring of homeless youth to drive its delivery vans.

But ultimately, it’s taste buds that drive the market. As Mill Street’s Abrams says, “Our research shows that flavour is the single biggest factor for consumers. The fact that it’s organic is nice but for the vast majority it’s not the number one reason to buy.

The post Organic beer is greener beer appeared first on Corporate Knights.

These eggs could be sold the day they’re laid, but not beyond the front gates of the small, organic farms that produce them. According to the Ontario Ministry of Food and Agricultural Affairs, all eggs retailed beyond the farm gate must be graded for quality. It can take up to three days for eggs from the farm to reach grocery stores.

Likewise, farms that have more than 99 laying hens must pay for a certain share in the production market. For farms trying to meet growing demand, this can cost hundreds of dollars per hen, depending on the province. This makes farm-fresh eggs even less available to consumers.

A February 2010 Globe and Mail article reports that this has created a hushed underground market, where farm-fresh eggs are kept out of sight and access is limited to people who “know the password.”

For those not in the know, the lack of farm-fresh eggs in mainstream markets makes “backyard chickens”—hens raised privately in individual backyards—an attractive alternative. Tom Henry, editor of Small Farm Canada, says once people taste the alternative, “industrial chickens and eggs don’t look good. People are asking for free-range or organic, but the bulk of eggs in the supermarkets are not.”

“Mary,” who asked her real name not be used, bought her first backyard chicken in 2007, even though it’s currently illegal to raise backyard chickens in Toronto. But, Mary, owner of torontochickens.com, was frustrated with the lack of alternatives. Motivated by concerns for food security, animal welfare, and the disparity between consumers and food producers, she turned to urban chickens as a way of taking control.

“We’re so dependent on food labels to understand what’s in our food because we don’t know where it’s made,” says Mary. Even certified organic labels aren’t enough to guarantee quality. In Mary’s opinion, having backyard hens means “being able to control the quality [yourself].”

Egg Farmers of Canada, the national marketing agency for eggs, claims the contrary. With recent listeriosis and avian flu outbreaks, consumers are increasingly concerned for the safety and regulation of eggs, says Laurent Souligny, the agency’s chairman. “And that’s what we spend a lot of time on. We want to make sure the eggs get to the consumer, and that they are safe to eat.”

However, factory farming exacerbates the risks of virulent strains of avian flu in the poultry industry, according the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In recent avian flu cases, the existence of food safety standards failed to prevent outbreaks, and overcrowded animal conditions foster the spread of pandemics.

These impacts are pushing concerned consumers towards organic options. According to Agriculture Canada, Canadian egg consumption has dropped over the past decade, but sales of organic and free-range eggs are increasing every year by nearly 20 percent.

Beyond the panic for organic, people still want backyard hens.

Bill Bruce, head of the City of Calgary’s bylaw services, says that Calgary’s city council is currently revisiting a backyard livestock ban. “There’s been a real swing in what the public wants. There’s a whole movement towards [sustainability], and backyard hens are a part of [that].”

Although consumers may be more focused on sustainability, urban hens aren’t always viable. The City of Vancouver addressed potential concerns when reviewing its ban on backyard chickens in March 2009. A draft bylaw outlines—among other specifics—that owners must provide basic animal healthcare, and nuisance complaints and humane animal treatment will be regulated by animal control services and the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The new bylaw could be implemented as early as April 2010.

These changes in Calgary and Vancouver are a sign of progress, says Mary, but she is skeptical as to whether urbanizing egg production will make a dent in conventional egg sales.

The post City chickens, country eggs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

After seeing the documentary Earthlings— nicknamed the “vegan maker” due to its horrifying footage of animal treatment— Laraque officially gave up all animal products on June 1, 2009.

Animals aren’t his only passion—he’s also a humanitarian. A Haitian-Canadian, Laraque teamed up with World Vision and the NHL Players’ Association to start Hockey for Haiti after the January earthquake. His goal is to raise $5 million to rebuild a children’s hospital, and he’ll be going to Haiti in June.

Laraque seems to be as full of surprises off the ice as he is when he’s throwing hard hits for the NHL. In February 2010, he joined the Green Party of Canada.

Corporate Knights met up with Georges in the parking lot of his favourite organic market, Marché Tau, in Brossard, Quebec to talk sticks, steak, and saving the world.

Did you find it hard making the jump to veganism?

No, because I have three big reasons: compassion for animals, health, and the environment. A lot of people say eating meat is tradition. Well, back in the day, women couldn’t vote. There’s a tradition. Can they vote today? Hell, yeah. Society evolves. The youth are educated, they’re careful of what they’re eating, people are eating organic, and there are vegan and vegetarian restaurants around the world. Whether we like it or not, people are eating less and less meat, but not fast enough.

Do you think people who watch hockey will see things your way?

With my notoriety, I can captivate an audience that scientists and environmentalists can’t—the people who go to hockey games, drink beer, and go to steakhouses. They go to steakhouses and feel tired and want to take a nap. But when you eat, you shouldn’t feel that way— you should feel energized. If your body’s working that hard to digest meat, you’re wasting that edge you could have used to play sports.

The stupidest question some people ask me—people defending the fact that they’re going to keep on eating meat—is, “What right do you have to talk about animals? You beat up people.” But animals don’t stand in line to get slaughtered. They can feel pain. They don’t stand in line to get cut up to finish on a plate. But when I fight someone on the ice, I fight a millionaire— someone who is willing, someone who does the same job as me. So you can’t compare.

Can business help us save the world?

Any business can change to be better for the environment. People say if there are no more slaughterhouses, what are we going to do with the industry? Well, would we tell people to smoke more to keep encouraging the tobacco industry? Instead of building factories to slaughter animals, we could grow greens. When you look at the amount of grains they give to feed animals—that’s enough to feed the world.

There is talk you may be investing in a vegan restaurant in Montreal?

I can’t name it yet, but yes. I can help people have another choice for where they eat. Another big stereotype is that if you’re vegan, all you eat is tofu. I barely even eat tofu. I want to play a role on the business side of changing the economy, because it’s one thing to talk, but another to act.

You’re involved with the Green Party. You can lose a lot of friends when you get political. Did you have any negative experiences?

When you’re in the public eye, you will get criticism. But there is not one person I cross on the street who doesn’t shake my hand and say they are happy that I’m working with the Green Party. So if somebody’s going to criticize, I guess they don’t care about the future and the environment.

Would you ever consider playing a more public role in the Green Party in Quebec?

A lot of people ask me that, and I don’t say no, because I would’ve never thought I would’ve done the stuff I’ve done. I dreamed that I would be in the NHL, and being a black kid, I had less than a 0.001 per cent chance. I made it. If somebody had told me I would be an animal activist or a member of a political party when I was 20 years old and ignoring the environment, I would be like, “Yeah, right.” Anything can happen.

You’ve shown a lot of support for the people of Haiti. Tell me about that.

Yes. We approached World Vision because they’ve been in Haiti for 30 years. They were there before the earthquake. They’re going to be there for the long run, and Haiti needs people not just for quick visiting, but people there for a long time.

…People will respect you [for your humanity], not by how many goals you scored. If the guy working at the dollar store does more for society than the hockey player does, he’s a bigger and better person than you are. Because then you’re just a toy, just entertainment— people yell at you and tell you what to do. But it doesn’t do anything for society.

You want to be more than entertainment?

I want to be a person of impact and make change to society for the better. I’m always going to be this way, because that’s what’s important. That’s what counts in life.

The post Georges Laraque is a fighter & a lover appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But another attack has been taking place for over a decade, steadily and surely, with little major news attention. From 1997 to 2007, over 180,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide. Rather than the affluent echelons affected in Mumbai, this tragedy strikes at the agricultural heart of India: a nation where about 70 per cent of the population is still involved in a 5,000-year-old tradition of agriculture.

Indian farmers in crisis

“You could see the suicides coming,” says farmer Karuna Futane. She and her husband live in the “suicide belt” of Vidarba, Maharashtra.

“All around us, farmers were losing their children to the cities; they were becoming lonely and hopeless,” Futane says. “All their money was going out from the village, and nothing was coming back. In society overall, there has been a loss of sensitivity, dialogue, and connection among people. It was only a matter of time.”

“Suicide has become so common that no one takes it seriously anymore,” says Giridhar Patil, an agricultural activist in Nashik, Maharashtra.

The big picture

In 2007, 16,632 farmers committed suicide. Since records are likely to exclude tenant and women farmers, this is actually a conservative estimate.

According to a study by Professor K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, nearly two-thirds of all suicides occurred in five states: Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. These states were leaders in the high-yield agriculture program known as the Green Revolution. They have also embarked wholeheartedly into the SEZ (Special Economic Zones) program: a program that invites multinational corporations into their areas to set up shop, with promises of more relaxed environmental regulations and tax breaks.

“[There is] an acute agrarian crisis across the country,” says Nagaraj.

Indian government policies favour large-scale, industrial, and corporate farming. Mechanization on large farms has dramatically reduced the number of people working in agriculture, leading to rising unemployment and an influx into urban areas.

As state investment in agriculture has disappeared, land and water stresses have worsened. Operating costs have shot up, with some inputs seeing cost hikes of several hundred per cent. This has forced farmers to take out high-interest loans from banks and private lenders to stay afloat.

Meanwhile, crop prices have crashed due to massive US-EU subsidies to growers, casino-style commodity futures markets, and price rigging by large corporations. Farmers often don’t make enough revenue to cover their interest payments.

Stories of difficult industrial agriculture transitions have played out worldwide for the last half-century, reaching as far as Canada’s own Prince Edward Island. The province has lost 325 of its 400 hog farmers in the last six years due to centralized retailing and international commodity pricing.

In India, the additional burdens of changing weather patterns and irregular rainfall have pushed farmers into an endless cycle of debt, depression, and despair. Often, suicide is the only way out.

“Even as subsidies for corporate farmers in the West rose, we cut our few, very minimal life supports and subsidies to our own farmers,” says Nagaraj. “The collapse of investment in agriculture also meant it was, and is, most difficult to get out of this trap.”

The other Green Revolution

To Western ears, a green revolution sounds promising. But in India, the Revolution has signaled a major switch in Indian agriculture over the last 50 years.

“Out of the Green Revolution, only 10 per cent of farmers made money. The situation of the other 90 per cent was not improved at all,” says Vasant Futane. “The government is now promoting corporate sector farming and helping companies like Monsanto and Reliance to acquire large plots of land. They are ruining the environment, leading to the permanent degradation of the land.”

In 1961, Norman Borlaug, a Rockefeller Foundation affiliate who created hybrid grains, traveled to India to pitch the use of hybrid seeds to solve its looming food crisis, ostensibly due to unusual droughts, incomplete land reforms, and population increases. Rather than addressing these root causes, the government launched its own program of hybrid plant breeding. Crop yields increased dramatically, and the leaders of the Green Revolution were highly praised.

But India has seen the Revolution’s dark side; though food exports are booming, famine lingers because biased distribution channels are limiting the ability of the poor to access food.

The suicides are just one of many environmental and socioeconomic effects of the Green Revolution. The new ‘high yield seeds’ require chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow. Farmers must repurchase these seeds every season since they cannot be replanted. Every year, crops require additional fertilizers and pesticides as nutrients diminish and pests grow resistant to the chemicals. And with everyone planting the same seeds, a single disease can devastate an entire nation’s harvest.

Such difficulties manifest themselves as suicides. Tragically, the majority of the farmers have been committing suicide by ingesting the very chemicals that have destroyed their land, families, and communities.

An oasis in the desert

In this midst of this destruction, Futane and her husband Vasant are creating an oasis in the desert. Inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution—a small-scale organic farming system that does not require weeding, pesticide or fertilizer applications, or tilling—as well as the non-violence practices of Vinoba Bhave and Mahatma Gandhi, they are attempting to cultivate Swaraj, a state of self-reliant living. Swaraj emerges when people begin to take their lives in their own hands and take responsibility for the whole — self, nature, and community.

The Futanes practice contour bunding and sowing, a type of watershed management. Crops align with the landscape to maximize water use and conserve topsoil. Farmers use free, natural fertilizers, such as cow dung and cow urine. Mixed cropping is also practiced.

“We try to show local farmers that through these methods, they can improve the quality of their soil and increase their yields,” Vasant Futane says. He also suggests that reducing spending on luxury and consumer items like extravagant weddings and motorcycles will help communities to prioritize spending on food.

“[Villagers] can decide to give loans to each other and avoid banks with their high interest rates,” he says.

Futane also advocates seed banks for traditional seed varieties to reduce market dependencies. His greatest hope lies in a direct link from farmers to markets.

“In 1990, we planted 25 local variety papaya trees. The fruit were beautiful. If we went to sell it in the city, we would have gotten a lot of money for it. But we decided to sell them in a nearby large village,” he recounts. “There, people discarded the artificially ripened ones and would save up money to buy our papayas. Other farmers began growing these varieties, because they saw the value in them.”

The Futanes feel it’s unlikely that the Indian government will support them in making these changes happen.

They explain that today, farmers can only find genetically modified cotton seeds on the market. In fact, homegrown seeds may soon become scarce in India, since the government wants farmers to use corporate varieties only.

“I feel genetically modified crops (GMCs) have to be banned and boycotted,” Vasant says. “Manmohan Singh [the Prime Minister] is signalling to Monsanto to help launch India’s second Green Revolution. The government has turned a blind eye to the situation of farmers. It is time to protest for only direct subsidies, not indirect subsidies by way of company products.”

Indeed, given the lack of media attention, as well as the government’s active courtship of transnational agribusiness giants, its openness to GMCs and its following of World Bank policies, India’s government seems locked on this course. Support for large-scale factory farming and export-oriented agriculture will make the country dependent on foreign private investment.

“India’s minister of finance, Palaniappan Chidambaram, envisions a future where 85 per cent of India’s population lives in cities and only 15 per cent are engaged in agriculture,” writes Mira Kamdar, author of Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy and the Future of Our World.

“[He sees] an India with a heartland as empty as that of the United States with its few remaining farmers completely beholden to the agribusiness giants who sell them their seeds, their fertilizers, and their pesticides, and then buy their harvests.”

An organic future?

To critics who say that organic farming cannot produce enough food to feed the country, Karuna Futane responds: “Actually, if city people – who are respected – started coming back to the land, farmers would recover their pride and dignity. They would encourage their children to be part of it again.”

“Consumers need to understand that you can’t rush or substitute with farming. To be farming-literate is as important as being computer-literate. Without food, everything else is impossible.”

Vasant puts it simply: “City people can’t eat nuts and bolts and survive. Why don’t they connect with the land? If they do, then they won’t put such a burden on the farmers.”

Town and country

ReStore is an urban citizens’ collective created in Chennai by Sangeetha Sriram and her friends in response to a growing quest to relate the suicides to city-dwellers’ lifestyles.

“We wanted to create a space where people in the city could come together, look at what’s happening, and experiment with new ways of doing things. We thought food would be a good starting point, because there is already a lot of awareness around pesticides and organic foods,” says Sriram. “Though they want safe, whole food, and are aware of chemical residues, most people look at food in isolation. Eating well and responsibly is not just about [consuming] organic.”

ReStore sources produce from reliable rural organizations that work with small farmers and then sells this produce at a twice-weekly bazaar. ReStore also makes sure that farmers are producing enough food for themselves first. “We don’t want them to just grow millets for Chennai,” Sriram says.

To further bridge the gap, they have launched ‘Restore Earth Connections’, a program that takes city people on farm visits for mud-building, cow dung plasters, sowing and harvesting millets. Over 100 people signed up in the first week.

Groups committed to small-scale farming, organic produce, local ecologies, and whole and healthy foods have sprung up in other parts of India and the world. Southern Ontario has the CRAFT network which is helping to train the next generation of organic farmers and Saskatoon’s own Percy Schmeiser has become a global hero for taking on Monsanto single-handedly and bringing the issue of GMO contamination to the forefront of global food issues.

Cuba also converted its predominantly input-intensive agriculture to over 95 per cent organic farming, including large tracts of city farming, when the Soviet Union collapsed and its oil pipeline ended. With government support, this large-scale conversion took place in less than four years — a clear sign that more suicides and further disaster can be averted.

“We get hopeless sometimes, but we still have to keep going,” Vasant Futane says. “We will keep our fire lit, so that when someone needs light or heat, they will come to us. This is the Gandhian way. Mother Earth can satisfy everyone’s need, but not anyone’s greed.”

“When people start living according to their needs, we will find our way to true Swaraj.”

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