How Should We Judge This New Initiative?

Since the announcement of the Sustainable Food Policy Alliance (SFPA) last week, there has been a great deal of skepticism from the organic community.

Created by four major food companies — Danone North America; Mars, Incorporated; Nestlé USA; and Unilever United States — the SFPA aims to focus on five key areas: consumer transparency, environment, food safety, nutrition, and people and communities.

The main criticism was how could a group who has no official position against GMOs, and whose members are very reliant on GMOs and pesticides for their products, be a “sustainable” alliance?

GMO products are not only causing the proliferation of GMO contamination of organic and conventional farms, but the super-toxic chemicals sprayed on these farms — glyphosate, dicamba, 2,4-D, atrazine, chlorpyrifos — are contaminating the soil, the water supply and nearby crops, and sickening farmworkers and local residents. Without question, this is all resulting in catastrophic harm.

Organic Insider addressed the GMO issue directly with Chris Adamo, Vice President of Regulatory and Industry Affairs with Danone North America, one of the founding companies of SFPA. (He was not speaking on behalf of the SFPA or for the other three founding members, simply on behalf of Danone North America. SFPA is not managed as a formal trade organization, and none of the other three founding members responded to Organic Insider’s request for an interview.)

While Chris Adamo had no direct explanation or defense for the use of GMOs, he said, “We have launched a broad program and treat the system as a whole. There are a lot of pieces or activities that we are doing or working with our farmers on, such as tillage, cover crops, nutrient management, buffer zones, integrated weed management, and crop rotation. We are not focused on one but all of them.”

Danone North America, a member of the Organic Trade Association, the largest B-Corp in the world, and a company who has several organic brands in its portfolio, including Horizon, Earthbound Farms, Vega One Organic and Wallaby, announced a soil health initiative as part of The Danone Pledge, joined The Carbon Underground, and committed to explore Regenerative Organic Certification with some of its products.

Danone told Organic Insider that all four founding members in the SFPA conducted high-level briefings with the USDA, FDA and four agricultural committees in Congress (minority and majority in both houses) on sustainability and conservation. Additionally, all four members signed letters to the Senate Agriculture Committee reaffirming these concerns.

Chris Adamo, who had previously worked for Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) as a legislative counsel and then as a senior staffer for the Senate’s Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, said, “I never got lobbied by a food company for sustainability or conservation. No one had ever done that. It was not a typical advocacy effort.”

While the four companies of the SFPA are continuing to make investments in organic brands, particularly Danone, and are embracing more environmentally-friendly initiatives, the underlying business model of these companies was built on industrial food, factory farms and GMOs.

And even if they wanted to switch to all-organic ingredients tomorrow, the supply chain is just not there. As such, the transition to organic, Non-GMO and sustainable practices is going to be a more gradual one.

All that being said, these companies must move off of the GMO treadmill entirely because there is nothing sustainable about genetically-engineered seeds, glyphosate, dicamba, 2,4-D and the litany of other toxic chemicals that are being sprayed on much of our food supply.

Given the reality that all four members of the SFPA will not be abandoning this GMO treadmill any time soon, the question then becomes whether the group can add value to society, from an environmental perspective, in the interim.

Can the lobbying efforts of these powerful companies result in Congress prioritizing or maintaining funding for conservation initiatives?

Can the lobbying efforts of these powerful companies result in politicians placing a greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental issues?

Can the SFPA encourage other major food companies to lobby Congress on sustainability and environmental issues?

Can the SFPA motivate its existing or potential new members to do even more for soil and water health?

And, most importantly, can the SFPA be the spark that gets these companies to move towards chemical-free agriculture?

For some people, it is an all or nothing proposition. For others, any step in the right direction is a positive one.

Time will tell just how effective and meaningful this alliance will be.

Have a great day! Max Goldberg, Founder