How it is measured is the challenge farmers face

Christopher Bonasia
The Advocate

A framework for measuring sustainability across the agri-food industry was presented to a full room during a two-day conference earlier this month, with some questioning how small and mid-sized businesses will fare.

Panelists throughout the Canadian Agri-Food in a Sustainable World conference — hosted in Ottawa by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute on Oct. 2 and 3 — spoke to attendees about how standards for sustainability were shaping how Canada’s food producers compete on national and global markets.

‘Sustainability’ is now a widely sought label among consumers. But agri-food businesses — like farmers, food processors and distributors — have struggled to assign a concrete way to measure it as they try to balance environmental stewardship against other priorities, like maintaining revenue and paying fair wages.

One way to provide clarity was put forward by David McInnes, founder of the Centre for Agri-Food Benchmarking, as he presented the National Index on Agri-Food Performance released by his organization. The index was created by a coalition of private-public partners to “present an integrated picture of sustainability for Canada’s agri-food sector from food production to retail,” according to the centre.

McInnes emphasized that the index should be used as a “framework to derive value” from agri-food businesses’ sustainability efforts by setting standards and ways of measuring performance throughout the supply chain.

“If we don’t measure ourselves, we will be measured,” McInnes told attendees.

The National Index on Agri-Food Performance designates metrics for measuring sustainability across indicators in four categories: environment, economic, food integrity and societal well-being. When applied to a business, the index offers a method of measuring sustainability that doesn’t fall prey to a tunnel-vision focus on any one outcome — like carbon emissions, for example — at the expense of others.

Carbon emissions are included as one metric to measure climate performance, among other environmental indicators, like soil health and water stewardship. But businesses also need to measure up against non-environmental indicators, like food safety, “financial vibrancy and resiliency,” supplying decent work environments and supporting food security.

The index has clear utility for larger businesses and corporations required to apply environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets to their practices and report their performance to investors and boards. But panelists noted that  small and medium-sized enterprises are also feeling pressure to measure up to sustainability standards. Even businesses that haven’t set targets may be asked to report their performance to those they sell to.

Though the index is meant to be used by businesses of all scales, the burden of reporting is proportionally heavier for small and medium-sized businesses that may not have resources to invest in sophisticated data collection. The index’s designers account for this, specifying that these smaller businesses can instead use public data to estimate their outcomes.

But Bruce Marchand, interim chair of the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board, pointed out that estimations based on out-of-date datasets could mask improvement of Canada’s food producers as a whole. The sector could then benefit from public access to better data collection, perhaps from governments or industry associations.

Still, softening requirements for SMEs will not entirely offset the added strain placed on smaller businesses. The trend of increased reporting requirements generally tends to favour larger players, and panelists acknowledged that even reporting based on the index is likely to result in consolidation of food production among ever larger businesses. Panelists emphasized that small and medium-sized enterprises need support to remain competitive, and including protection for them as an indicator of the index could provide them with an edge.