How Walmart’s sustainability efforts could impact on-farm production

by Sara Wyant

It’s been said that when Walmart Corporation takes a giant step, the rest of the food industry feels the earth move. The nation’s largest grocer, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, has more than 8,600 stores under 55 different banners in 15 countries, 2.1 million employees and 2010 sales of $408 billion.

If that’s the case, the supply chain might have been shaking Oct. 14 when Walmart announced the company’s new global sustainable agriculture goals. Company officials say their plan will help small and medium-sized farmers expand their businesses, get more income for their products, and reduce the environmental impact of farming, while strengthening local economies and providing customers around the world with long-term access to affordable, high-quality, fresh food.

Critics say much of Walmart’s sustainability plan is more image than substance. It’s part of a broader public relations campaign to improve perception of the global behomoth by linking their “big box” stores with local farmers, they suggest. This strategy allows the firm to offer some organic and local products to get younger, health conscious consumers in the door, while offering the types of inexpensive food products that the majority of their customer base already depends on.

However, other industry sources think that Walmart officials are on the march toward a more sustainable future, even if they don’t exactly know what that will look like when they find it. This latest announcement expands upon a broader 2005 initiative that aimed to improve energy efficiency, cut waste, use more renewable energy and encourage suppliers to adopt sustainable practices.

Over time, this latest initiative could lead to the development of social and environmental benchmarks that all producers would have to meet before selling products to Walmart. And eventually, these supply chain decisions could lead to industry-wide changes in U.S. food production by requiring, for example, “soil health” to meet certain measurements.

“Over time, may not need the U.S. government setting standards for how we plant, spray and harvest. We will just have to follow Walmart’s rules,” noted a farmer who has been in discussions with Walmart officials.

Walmart officials say they are just one part of a broader food industry push toward sustainability.

“Through sustainable agriculture, Walmart is uniquely positioned to make a positive difference in food production -- for farmers, communities and customers. Our efforts will help increase farmer incomes, lead to more efficient use of pesticides, fertilizer and water, and provide fresher produce for our customers,” explained Mike Duke, Walmart President and CEO, in a company release. Duke, who grew up on a Georgia farm, has first hand-knowledge of the complexities of food production and he’s spent time touring farms in different parts of the U.S. to better understand the technologies being employed.

Certainly, Walmart is not alone in the rush to “go green” in the U.S. and around the globe. Other major farm and food players, like Cargill, Monsanto, Syngenta, General Mills, Kelloggs, Pepsico, Mars, Dairy Management Inc., and Stonyfield Farms are also on the hunt for measurable sustatinability goals.

They joined Walmart in funding the Sustainability Consortium, which plans to develop “transparent methodologies, tools and strategies to drive a new generation of products and supply networks that address environmental, social and economic imperatives, according to their web site. Ironically, the very farmers who might be most impacted by their benchmarks, are not part of the Consortium, where first tier membership costs $100,000 per year.

The Consortium, which is jointly managed by the University of Arkansas and Arizona State University and includes research from universities around the globe, has been developing an index which can be used to evaluate and measure sustainable practices on the farm and throughout the supply chain.

Eventually, this might lead to products in your local Walmart that are “scored” according to their level of sustainability, says Matt Kistler, the Senior Vice President of Marketing for Walmart and the man who previously served as Senior Vice President for Sustainability.

Already, Walmart surveyed 100,000 global suppliers to answer some basic questions around their business, explains Kistler. The questions focused on four areas: energy and climate; material efficiency; natural resources; and people and community

For example, “Do they measure greenhouse gas emissions? Do they supply that information to the Carbon Discloser Project? What is your total water use from facilities that produce your product?”

As more research data becomes available through the Consortium, Walmart may ask farmers what inputs they can reduce or what the optimized level of pesticides and herbicides and water to use on a given crop, says Kistler. Once there is a baseline established, Walmart buyers can ask suppliers how they perform against the baseline.

Will that include looking at corn that’s fed to hogs and cattle? Exactly how far will they go in trying to establish a baseline? Kistler says that some of those answers are yet to be determined.

“The deeper supply chains get and the more complex they are, it will take more time and we may get to a point of diminishing returns,” he adds. “You can imagine, in the scale we purchase in, that doing things better by just a small percentage can make tremendous differences. We want to make sure we do them the right way.”

In the meantime, Walmart is focusing on acquiring more food from small and medium size farmers, sourcing more items locally, reducing food waste, providing training, and a number of other initiatives around the globe.

In emerging markets, Walmart will help many farmers gain access to markets by selling $1 billion in food sourced from 1 million small and medium farmers and providing training to 1 million farmers and farm workers by 2015. The focus will be on crop selection and sustainable farming practices – with about half of those trained expected to be women.

The company will require sustainably sourced palm oil for all Walmart private brand products globally by the end of 2015. And it will expand the already existing practice for Walmart Brazil of only sourcing beef that does not contribute to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest to all Walmart companies worldwide by the end of 2015.

In the U.S., Walmart’s Heritage Agriculture program will help the company double the sale of locally grown food, defined as fruits and vegetables sold in the same state. The program focuses on sourcing produce from states and regions with long histories of agricultural production and reaching a level of 9% of the produce in U.S. stores. Three of Walmart’s largest Heritage Agriculture programs are in the 1-95 corridor along the East coast, the Delta region in the South and the Mid-America region of the Midwest.

For a link to a map showing these regions: http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability/10378.aspx


For more background on the regions:

Mid-America ProjectIn the Midwest, where more families are relying on their farms for subsistence, we are increasing our purchases of crops such as apples and potatoes. States in this area have long histories of agriculture production with outstanding soil and water resources. Other examples of crops in this area include onions, cherries, celery, peaches, melons, sweet corn, blueberries and peppers.

I-95 Corridor ProjectIn the I-95 corridor along the East Coast, there is a high concentration of women- and minority-owned growers that benefit as we expand purchases of vegetables, such as bell peppers, cucumbers and squash. By taking advantage of the growing season beginning in Florida and moving northward, we can source tomatoes, peaches, greens, melons, sweet corn, blueberries, apples and broccoli.

Delta States ProjectThe Delta region of the South has a long history of cash crops, such as tobacco and cotton, which are in decline. We are replacing these with produce, such as blueberries in Mississippi and Arkansas where the growing season is longer. Other items include tomatoes, peaches, cabbage, onions, melons, strawberries, peppers, cucumbers and potatoes.
Source: Walmart Corporation web site

#30

What else are we missing about Deputy Merrigan?

Before Michael Pollan, and King Corn, the current Deputy Secretary was full of criticism for agriculture as we know it

When the Senate Agriculture Committee held a hearing to consider the nomination of Kathleen Merrigan to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, we heard most of the niceties you would expect for someone who used to be a staff member there. Her former boss, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), offered glowing words of praise, as did most other committee members. Only Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) seemed to probe a little deeper into her past support for organic agriculture, asking whether or not she could be able to represent all of agriculture if confirmed to be the number two political leader at USDA.

Sitting on the sidelines at that same hearing were folks keeping their fingers crossed, hoping and praying that no one would ask about a little known chapter that Merrigan had written as part of a book, “Visions for Agriculture,” published in 1997. In that highly inflammatory chapter, Merrigan took a stab at almost every traditional interest group in agriculture, as well as the Senate Agriculture Committee, whose members she now needed to vote for her confirmation.

In short, she would have had some explaining to do.

But no one seemed to have read that little known piece of work, and no one asked....at least until now. We published several excerpts from the piece on www.Agri-Pulse.com

Read “This is not your father’s (or your mother’s) USDA,
http://www.agri-pulse.com/DownloadLogin.asp?Name=201002102SW1.pdf (subscriber only) It’s a straight up piece, that you can read and form your own opinion.

“The future of U.S. agriculture depends on reinventing government according to three principles: regulation, diversity, and democratic decision making. These principles will help farmers by ensuring market access and environmental stewardship…….To attain my vision of U.S. agriculture, we must undergo a disruptive period of heavy-handed government reforms, followed by a true partnership between the public and private sectors,” Merrigan wrote while she was a senior analyst for the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, a Washington, DC-based organization which promotes research and education in sustainable agriculture.

She went on to bash almost every traditional commodity and interest group that has influenced agricultural policy for the last several decades and called for major changes in cropping patterns. Hardly any ox remained ungored.

In this week’s Open Mic interview, we asked Merrigan about her focus at USDA and tried to provide a better understanding of her role. To listen, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com or to download on your PDA, click here:
http://www.agri-pulse.com/uploaded/OpenMic020810.mp3

But now, lots of folks are reading that chapter and wondering: What else should we know about the Deputy? And what else don’t we know about the new agenda at USDA?

We have asked our readers to read and react. Let us know your thoughts on how USDA is doing.

Agriculture News, Farm Policy, and Rural Policy

#30

A world free of hunger?

We have the intelligence and the technology, but can we overcome the political hurdles?

By Sara Wyant

When Dr. Norman Borlaug, father of the ‘green revolution’ passed away in September, leaders from around the globe memorialized the Nobel Peace Prize winner as the "greatest hunger fighter of our time." But even he acknowledged that his work was far from over, especially in places like Africa, where one-third of the population is hungry and malnourished.

A diverse group of business leaders, including MicroSoft founder Bill Gates, is committed to building on Borlaug’s progress and turning the Iowa native’s vision into a global reality. Speaking at the World Food Prize ceremony in mid-Oct, Gates said that, while Borlaug’s passing was “cause for sadness, his life should make us optimistic. In the middle of the 20th century, experts predicted famine and starvation, but they turned out to be wrong – because they did not predict Norman Borlaug. He not only showed humanity how to get more food from the earth – he proved that farming has the power to lift up the lives of the poor.”

So how did one of the world’s richest men, who co-chairs the $30-plus billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with his wife and father, come to be so passionate about agriculture and especially the role of science in agriculture?

“When we started our foundation, we agreed that our giving should be guided by our belief that all lives have equal value—that every person deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life, Gates explained in his speech. “Over time, our search for the greatest leverage brought us to the most compelling challenge in development: how do you help people who live on less than a dollar a day?

“The answer is in the work they do. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land. So if we can make small-holder farming more productive and more profitable, we can have a massive impact on hunger and nutrition and poverty.

Trouble ahead?

When it comes to increasing productivity, Gates has clearly done his math, but he’s troubled by the forces who oppose some of the science-based tools necessary to reach those goals.

“Africa is the only place where per capita cereal yields have been flat over the last 25 years,” he explained. “The average farmer in sub-Saharan Africa gets just over half a ton of cereal per acre. An Indian farmer gets twice that; a Chinese farmer, four times that; an American farmer; five times that. The technology and new approaches that are transforming agriculture in other parts of the world can be applied in new ways, and help Africa flourish too.
Gates says the global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two. On one side “ a technological approach that increases productivity. On the other side is an environmental approach that promotes sustainability. Productivity or sustainability – they say you have to choose.

“It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field. It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers.

“The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability – and there is no reason we can’t have both,” he emphasized. “The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first. It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.

“The charge is clear – we have to develop crops that can grow in a drought; that can survive in a flood; that can resist pests and disease. We need higher yields on the same land in harsher weather. And we will never get it without a continuous and urgent science-based search to increase productivity – especially on small farms in the developing world,” says Gates.

Other business leaders join

At the same World Food event, several other leading agribusinesses provided their support for ending world hunger, as part of the new Global Harvest Initiative (GHI). This effort was founded by Archer Daniels Midland Company, DuPont, John Deere and Monsanto Company, but is open to other members. These companies already invest more than $9 million a day in research and development, according to GHI.

“We agree that we must double our agricultural output if we are to meet the needs of the world population in 2050,” said Ellen Kullman, chief executive officer, DuPont. “We believe this must be done in a sustainable way to reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint and conserve the precious resources available to us. We know it’s going to require cooperative efforts across industries and geographies, and between private and public entities. With all of us working toward a common goal, we can leverage many opportunities throughout the agriculture value chains to feed our growing, global population.”
Bill Lesher, Global Harvest Initiative executive director agrees that the dynamics may finally be right to make significant headway.

“We are in a prime position to make the difference that Norman Borlaug envisioned. At no time have we encountered such a positive environment for change, such a diverse group of leaders primed to work together,” he adds.

Agriculture News, Farm Policy, and Rural Policy