- Representatives of the “From Farm to Fork” project spoke about biodiversity in agricultural supply chains at BIOFACH, the world’s leading trade fair for organic food
- From the field to the store counter, stakeholders must be sensitized to the fundamental importance of biodiversity
- Possible measures to offset the costs of sustainable production include higher retail prices, lower VAT and the consideration of ecosystem services
Green-yellow go
ld: Pineapple from Costa Rica
and the Dominican Republic are popular in Germany – but at what ecological price are they produced?
Radolfzell, 06.03.2023: It is a megatopic for the food industry: biodiversity. Agricultural production is impossible in the long term without biodiversity, and measures to protect biodiversity also help the agricultural sector to adapt to the consequences of climate change. Panel guests discussed success factors for mainstreaming biodiversity in agricultural supply chains at a prominent discussion event at this year’s BIOFACH, the world’s leading trade fair for organic food in Nuremberg.
The panelists in the session on February 14 have been successfully testing approaches to integrating biodiversity into agricultural supply chains with their institutions since 2018 in the “From Farm to Fork” project. Specifically, the focus was on the biodiversity-friendly production of bananas and pineapples in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
Education for biodiversity and biodiversity-oriented standards
Carmen Langner, Project Manager at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), cited intensive cooperation with local producers as a key success factor in her presentation. According to Langner, awakening openness, interest and understanding for the topic of biodiversity is essential in order to protect biodiversity on large plantations as well as in small cooperatives. She presented the “Biodiversity Check Agriculture” (BCA) and an ideas competition for creative measures on farms as successful instruments.
The participants agreed that the importance of education and training applies not only to producers, but also to those involved in agricultural advisory services: Everyone involved in agricultural production needs to understand the impact of biodiversity loss on their livelihoods and livelihoods. Biodiversity and climate protection criteria should therefore also be integrated into internationally applicable sustainability standards such as Demeter and Fairtrade, which must apply to all certified farms.
However, Christoph Simpfendörfer from Demeter International and Martin Schüller from Fairtrade International addressed the increasing difficulty in the context of such mainstreaming to ensure the implementation of the measures on the farms with the additional prices generated by their certifications. “Cost of compliance” is the keyword for the costs incurred in complying with the criteria defined by the respective standard.
Approaches to cost recovery: higher prices, lower taxes, life cycle assessment
According to Simpfendörfer and Schüller, a key lever for solving the problem is to increase prices at the supermarket checkout: consumers must be made more aware of the importance of biodiversity in order to understand the need for higher costs – because surveys show that most people are definitely receptive to the issue of biodiversity and that sales of sustainable products are growing steadily. Demeter and Fairtrade are also currently working on other models that could supplement the unpopular price increase for end customers in order to finance biodiversity measures.
One concept is to waive VAT on particularly sustainable products. This would narrow the price gap to conventional products and make sustainable products more attractive. Another model concerns the possible remuneration of the ecological values created – so-called ecosystem services – according to the concept of Regionalwert AG, which records and balances operational costs for biodiversity and climate protection measures.
Find out more about the “From Farm to Fork” project
Background
The project “From Farm to Fork: Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Agricultural Food Value Chains” is being implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the NGOs Global Nature Fund (GNF) and Bodensee-Stiftung on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) with measures in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Europe. Between fall 2018 and fall 2023, the banana and pineapple supply chains will be used to illustrate and test how mainstreaming can be successful.
Contact us
Global Nature Fund
Dr. Thomas Schaefer
Head of Living Lakes & Nature Conservation
Fritz-Reichle-Ring 4
78315 Radolfzell
Phone: +497732 9995 85
E-mail: schaefer@globalnature.org
Website: www.globalnature.org