Ensuring Transparency in our Food Systems
Leading Harvest aims to rapidly scale positive social, environmental and economic outcomes across the agribusiness supply chain through universal standard and certification programs. It launched in April 2020 with over 2 million U.S. farmland acres committed to the program. We sat down with Kenny Fahey, Executive Director for Leading Harvest and Working Lands Principal at The Conservation Fund, to discuss Leading Harvest’s origins, collaboration with The Conservation Fund, and goal to become the primary agriculture certification program across the U.S. and beyond.
How does Leading Harvest differ from other farmland certifications like certified organic?
Kenny Fahey: The Leading Harvest approach is unique in three ways. First, it is designed for universal application across all crops, all geographies, and it covers the full spectrum of economic, environmental, and social issues. It is designed to rationalize the market for certifications by offering a single solution that can get to scale. Second, it is outcomes-based, which means that instead of prescribing a set of activities a farmer must follow, it allows a farmer to innovate the most optimal sustainability solutions for their particular operation to achieve those outcomes. It places farmers in the driver seat of defining their own sustainability journey. Third, it is backed by independent, third-party audits to ensure that the outcomes defined in the standard are being met.
What is The Conservation Fund's role and what makes its connection a good fit?
Kenny: For over 35 years, The Conservation Fund has worked on innovative initiatives at the intersection of business and the environment. When we were approached with the idea of Leading Harvest three years ago, we felt we could add value as a lead NGO partner in ensuring that the program maintained the right balance between credibility and conservation rigor with a business-minded orientation toward scale.
Photo courtesy Hancock Natural Resource Group.
What have you learned so far?
Kenny: I’ve learned that farmers are incredibly strong land stewards. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, but that improvement often needs to come from tools and resources that makes farmers’ lives easier and better positions them to succeed in the market. Leading Harvest tries to do its part by offering a rational pathway to independent, third-party certification. If we can support the farm community shoulder-to-shoulder, instead of making mandates from afar, we will achieve greater outcomes.
Why are partnerships so important to this work?
Kenny: The launch of Leading Harvest is the result of a three-year, multi-stakeholder effort that included leaders in the environmental nonprofit, academic, farmer, and asset management sectors. We very intentionally designed Leading Harvest to be additive to and complimentary to the variety of programs and initiatives that already exist in sustainable agriculture, recognizing that to get to scale fast will require coordination and collaboration across the vast landscape of sustainable agriculture stakeholders.
Photo by Ivan LaBianca.
What's next and what is your hope for this work?
Kenny: I look forward to seeing Leading Harvest grow both here in the U.S. and abroad. It has the potential to make agriculture a powerful change agent for environmental, social, and economic impact at unprecedented scale. It’s been a great privilege to support its launch.
Click here for more information on Leading Harvest.
You can also read Kenny's earlier blog post, Scaling Local Food Production Across Metro Regions.
