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Private Sector Protocols: Threats and Opportunities for American Farmers
2007-11-04
Global Private Sector Protocols: Threats and Opportunities for American Farmers
“In an increasingly global market place for farm products, farmers
need widely accepted standards that are capable of being audited.”
--Nigel Garbutt, Product Safety Manager, Safeway UK
The Global Issue of Food Security
Various private sector pre-farmgate protocols—initiated by global retail food chains, large food processing companies, and in some cases farm cooperatives—which guarantee food safety and sustainable farming practices are now competing for dominance throughout the European food industry. These same groups are also advocating for a harmonized, global system of protocols. The imposition and enforcement of non-governmental standards which will impact most U.S. farming operations is not far off. The implications for the producer inherent in these vastly increased consumer expectations about food safety, environmental, worker and animal rights, led one manager of an export company to conclude: “Risk and reward are spread evenly: the producer takes all the risk and the supermarket takes all the reward.”
Widespread consumer demand for assurance that their food is safe has become one of the strongest forces impacting global food trade. In the 1990s, Europe experienced an extended series of crises in the food sector, which created widespread public distrust of government regulators and government science, and cost the food industry billions of dollars. The list includes such widely reported incidents as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, more commonly known as mad cow disease), foot and mouth disease, dioxin contamination, diesel fuel in palm oil, sewage waste in feed, listeria in cheese, salmonella and antibiotics in poultry, and E-coli in animal meat. In Great Britain alone 129 people died in the 1990s of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, contracted by eating BSE-contaminated beef.
Because of these potential assaults on the personal health of consumers and the immense cost to producers and grocers once consumers lose confidence in the food system as a whole, the issue of food safety has risen to the top of the global food industry agenda. The questions are: Who is responsible for guaranteeing safe food? and, What is the best way to guarantee that the food supply is safe? While many entities are focusing resources on answering these two questions, each such organization, depending on its stakeholders, has a slightly different approach.
Sustainability
In addition to the urgent need to guarantee safe food, retailers and manufacturers are becoming increasingly interested in being able to claim that their supermarkets or their food brands are “sustainable.” “Sustainability” encompasses a great many diverse concepts, such as profitable farms, no or minimal pesticide and herbicide use, environmental sensitivity, nourishing the long-term health of the soil, healthy food, concern for farmworker health and well-being, humane treatment of animals, and rural development. Regardless of the specific definition, there is growing consumer interest in buying foods that are “sustainably” produced. A recent Natural Marketing Institute survey found that 54% of the U.S. general public agreed that they “prefer to purchase products that are manufactured in a sustainable manner,” and 49% agreed that they “will choose products from sustainable sources over other conventional products.” About 50% of the public did not know about or care about sustainable products.
Since the impact on farmers will come from both safe food and sustainable farm practices protocols, our investigation will look at both the narrower category of food safety protocols and the broader category of sustainable practices protocols.
Private Sector Protocols
The movement towards control of farming practices by the grocery industry began as the response of individual supermarkets to increasing global concentration and intense price competition in the food industry in the late 20th century. Partly as an attempt to compete on safety and environment rather than price (how can retail food outlets compete on price against Wal-Mart?), individual stores and national chains attempted to brand themselves as imposing strict food safety standards or stringent environmental standards on their farmer-suppliers.
For example, UK’s Tesco established its own assurance scheme, Nature’s Choice, which requires its suppliers to adhere to guidelines on the use of chemical inputs, energy and water efficiency, worker health and safety, and wildlife and landscape conservation. Sainsbury’s, another major British retailer, sought to enhance its brand differentiation by insisting that its suppliers not harm threatened species or habitat in sourcing wild products, and that they develop farm-level bio-diversity action plans. UK supermarket Waitrose experimented with a labeling scheme that would enable customers to distinguish sustainably grown food from conventional produce.
These responses to both activist consumer interest and intense global price competition in turn created a situation that threatened both farmers and retailers. A situation in which each supermarket has different standards for production practices in a global food chain makes the whole agricultural enterprise chaotic. To bring some order to the marketplace representatives of large international food retail chains, agricultural brokers, and occasionally growers’ associations have been trying to organize the international marketplace for several years.
EurepGAP is the private sector protocol that is having the greatest impact on the international marketplace to date. But there are a variety of other private sector and non-governmental initiatives that are vying for dominance of the food industry. Each of the initiatives has similar outlines. Standards are agreed to over several years by committees of industry and scientific leaders, some kind of third-party certification process is established, often a brand or label is attached to the product indicating compliance with the standards, and marketing is put in place to take advantage of the positive characteristics which have been certified. The leading groups which have established their credibility and authority include:
EurepGAP. As a response to consumer expectations that supermarkets guarantee the safety of the food supply system, seven years ago many of the major European grocery chains began meeting to establish a strict system of self-appraisal and private, third-party certification targeted at on-farm producers. This system, which is gaining a global following, is called EurepGAP. It is an acronym for Euro Retailer Produce Working Group adopting standards of Good Agricultural Practice. Because supermarkets have the organized capacity to deny shelf space to agricultural products that do not pass their standards, EurepGAP protocols give supermarkets the power to reach backwards down the food chain to dictate what farmers do, how they produce, how they manage their farms.
The key component of the EurepGAP system is a set of production protocols that farmers must certify they meet in order to be able to sell their products to participating supermarket chains. As of mid-2003, the EurepGAP protocols are being applied to fresh fruits and vegetables. Protocols for animal feed, animal production, coffee and flowers will be in place by year end 2004. By the end of the 2003 100% of the Dutch supermarkets were participating in the program and over 85% of all fresh fruits and vegetables sold in Dutch supermarkets are EurepGAP certified.
CIES. Another important player in the international application of food safety and environmental protocols is the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), facilitated by CIES—The Food Business Forum, which is headquartered in Paris and has a regional office in Silver Spring, Maryland. GFSI grew out of a meeting, in April 2000, of a group of international retailer CEOs who identified the need to enhance food safety; strengthen consumer confidence in the food they buy in retail outlets; set requirements for food safety standards; create harmony in the use of standards between all countries; and improve cost efficiency throughout the food supply chain. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Tesco (United Kingdom), Metro Ag (Germany), Carrefour (France) and Loblaw Companies Limited (Canada) are leading members of the GFSI Advisory Group. It claims that its working committee consists of 50 retailer quality managers whose companies do 65% of retail food sales worldwide.
GFSI does not itself accredit or certify; rather it has created a Guidance Document against which food safety management can be benchmarked. Application of the benchmarked standards to particular products is at the discretion of retailers and suppliers. GFSI’s long-term vision is the creation of a single global food safety standard. Understanding that cultural and legal differences come into play, GFSI has adopted the strategy of recognizing the reality of several standards and working for mutual recognition or equivalence between different national standards. The Global Food Safety Initiative has close ties to the Food Marketing Institute, headquartered in Washington, D.C., which created Safe Quality Foods Institute to oversee certification and auditing procedures.
FARRE. Unlike GFSI, which is driven by international retail chains, FARRE (or Agriculture raisonnéee) is a French protocol designed primarily by farmers. Members of the FARRE Farm Exchange Network are selected and approved by local committees and the National Executive Committee. All farmer members must sign the FARRE Charter, which details their commitment. They also agree to implement the Environmental Self-diagnosis process drawn up by FARRE’s Scientific Advisory Board. FARRE’s certification program requires producers to keep a journal, maintain a plan of each parcel, attend training courses on agriculture and the environment once every five years, maintain traceability of practices (keep a record of what the producer has done in each field), maintain sanitary equipment for farm workers, and train farm workers in farm safety. Some FARRE farms must also open themselves up for public view.
Speaking to a Study Group in July 2003, Gilles Maréchal, manager of FARRE, described Agriculture raisonnée as an integrated global approach to environment, economy and quality. The Study Group of state agriculture officials, farmers, rural sociologists, agricultural economists, and representatives of non-governmental organizations was organized and led by Jerry Nagel, President of Northern Great Plains Inc. (NGP) and a co-Project Director for this application. Maréchal told the group that the primary objective of FARRE is to ensure that farms can be profitable at the same time that they take the environment into account. According to Maréchal, “traceable practices are the key [to FARRE’s strategy]. Farmers must record what they do and must be able to prove what they claim. Producers must demonstrate health and safety at work and must manage farm waste.” Since FARRE considers the earth a public good, “the public has a right to have expectations about the use of farms. The public is fond of the landscape and wants to protect it. The public also wants to know what is in their food, what animals have eaten, and what drugs they’ve been given.”
There are national associations similar to FARRE in six other European countries: Germany (FIP), United Kingdom (LEAF), Sweden (ODLING I BALANS), Spain (AGROFUTURO), Luxembourg (FILL), and Italy (L’Agricoltura che Vogliamo). These seven national associations are grouped together in the European Initiative for Sustainable Development in Agriculture (E.I.S.A.).
QPM. Quality Partners Meat is an initiative of the German meat and retail food industries to regain the confidence of consumers in meat products. It created a “quality codex” of 43 requirements designed to make the entire animal food chain transparent, including feed, agriculture, transport, slaughtering, deboning, manufacture and retail. Input into the design of the codex was received from consumer associations, animal protection advocates and political leaders. QPF protocols, which are applied primarily in Germany, depend upon contractual agreements and sanctions based on independent third-party review for enforcement.
While many of these groups have their origins in the European food and agriculture sector, it is clear that their reach and intent is global. A review of the membership in these organizations shows a broad listing of firms with a presence throughout the world. Memberships range from Wal-Mart and Safeway to Del Monte and the Chilean Fresh Fruits Association to BASF and Dupont. Additionally, a review of the information materials that each group provides indicates a clear objective of establishing a harmonized, global system of food safety and sustainable agriculture practices protocols.
Because their standards are private sector initiated, global in reach and set detailed expectations about the production practices of farmers, we believe that EurepGAP’s protocols are potentially either the greatest threat or the clearest opportunity to American small and medium sized farms in the coming decade. Thus EurepGAP is the benchmark of our investigation into the effect of private sector protocols on small and mid-sized farms.
In the EurepGAP system, certification is contingent upon completion and verification by the farmer of a checklist that consists of 254 questions, 41 of which are considered Major Musts requiring 100% certification and 122 of which are considered Minor Musts requiring 95% certification. Another 91 are Shoulds, which are recommended but not required practices.
Some of the requirements of EurepGAP’s food safety and sustainable agriculture protocols include
• The product must be traceable to the registered farm where it was grown.
• Plantings of Genetically Modified Organisms must comply with existing regulations in both the country of production and the country of the final consumer.
• A recording system must be established for each field, orchard or greenhouse.
• A crop rotation plan must be in place or, in its absence, a justification must be made.
• Dates, quantities, method of application and operator details of fertilizer applications for each field must be recorded.
• Protection of crops against pests, diseases and weeds must be achieved with minimum pesticide input and recognized Integrated Pest Management techniques must be used on a preventive basis.
• Chemicals banned in the European Union must not be used on crops destined for sale in the European Union.
• Records of pesticide applications must be kept, including information on the date, crop, location, trade name, operator’s name, justification, quantity and machinery used.
• Each certified producer must complete one internal audit a year which tests for compliance with EurepGAP standards, and corrective actions must be taken where necessary.
• There must be a documented wildlife conservation management plan for either the individual farm or for the region which includes each certified farm.
• All workers who handle crop protection products must be able to demonstrate their knowledge and competence via official qualifications or training course attendance certification.
• One member of management must be responsible for ensuring compliance with national and local regulations on worker health, safety and welfare issues.
What is interesting about this list is that, though most requirements are put in place to assure consumers that the food they eat is safe, many of the items require environmentally beneficial practices to achieve the food safety goal. The relationship between safe food and other public goods is clearly set out in EurepGAP’s statement of purpose:
Consumers want to be sure that their food is being produced safely, environmentally friendly, and that the welfare of both animals and humans
are in no way compromised. With EurepGAP, consumers can be sure that
every step of primary production complies with international and national standards and regulations regarding safe production of their food.
In fact, EurepGAP refers to itself as The Global Partnership for Safe and Sustainable Agriculture.
Klaske Tienstra, the head of the EurepGAP division of the national Dutch supermarket trade association, told the NGP Study Group that one pressure to develop broad, inclusive protocols grew out of a chaotic situation in which individual supermarkets were applying their own purchasing standards in order to claim environmental sensitivity and concern for animal welfare as a merchandising tool. This left small and medium sized farmers caught in the middle between three or four potentially conflicting standards if they sold to more than one retail outlet. The more universal standard—EurepGAP—had two consequences for small/medium sized English and Dutch farmers, one positive, the other potentially negative. As a compromise among many varying supermarket standards, the final rules eliminated the most extreme requirements. However, as selection of the protocols moves further away from local bodies, the ability of farmers to affect the demands which will be made on them is diminished.
EurepGAP’s long-term goal is to arrive at one common, enforceable international set of farm production and management standards. Since food trade is international, food safety is a global issue which doesn’t respect international boundaries. Many of EurepGAP’s members, such as Tesco, Safeway, McDonald’s Europe, Du Pont, Syngenta, Fyffes and Del Monte, are large global players in the retail industry who cannot afford to operate with different standards for each source. They are pushing for common international recognition of a single set of private sector determined standards. (At present, EurepGAP only extends to imposing industry standards on farmers, but other initiatives are under way for the distribution sector as well.)
Though much of our preliminary research has been done on private sector European protocols, the practice of requiring farmers to meet private sector-imposed standards is well-known in the United States and it is growing. Many of the requirements in the US are on a contractual basis, suppler farmer to single company, or on an industry basis. Some examples of farmer- or NGO-initiated protocols are:
• The Missouri Rural Crisis Center organized the Patchwork Family Farms Project to market a full line of sustainably produced pork products to restaurants, grocery stores, and food coops.
• Niman Ranch of California processes lamb, beef, and pork from 45 independent farms that meet its quality standards, including a protocol for humane hog farming developed by the Animal Welfare Institute. It distributes to upscale restaurants nationally, the Williams-Sonoma catalog, and Whole Foods stores in Northern California and the mid-Atlantic region. In the last six years Niman Ranch, which sells only sustainable beef, pork and lamb, has seen its revenues rise from $3 million to $30 million.
• The Land Stewardship Project is developing a special label program called Food Choices that will help independent family farmers operating sustainable systems sell their pork for a premium price.
These three items are rudimentary examples of small/medium sized farmers using third party certification of quality, safe food and animal welfare protocols as marketing differentiation to gain higher prices and greater sales.
In addition to governmental regulations (USDA and FDA) which have kept the American food supply relatively safe for many years, the U.S. food industry has recently shown some interest in imposing and enforcing their own protocols. Some examples are:
• McDonald’s regulation of beef supply. Because of threat to McDonald’s global operations and a weakening of government inspection standards, McDonald’s is moving in the direction of EurepGAP-like standards. When one case of mad cow disease in the United States threatened to destroy America’s cattle industry, the government sought to reassure international consumers that America’s beef was safe by testing a very small sample. But, six months after discovery of the one sick cow, McDonald’s announced that they were going to require 10% of their beef purchases be traceable from farm to table within another six months. Not immediately, but until “at some point in the not-too-distant future we’ll draw a line in the sand and say that after a certain date, all of our animal products will be from animals that are under an animal ID program.”
• Another McDonald’s initiative shows the importance of private sector initiatives, rather than government rules, “regulating” the market. KIP Farms, a North Dakota irrigated potato grower, sells thousands of cwt to a regional processing plant which services McDonalds. In order to continue as a viable supplier, KIP Farms maintains traceability of its product. Periodic test samples are taken at the factory to guarantee proper characteristics, pesticide levels, nutrient composition, etc. To satisfy the contract, the producer must be able to trace potatoes to particular bins and fields.
• In October 2003 the Oregon Agriculture Department, which has been a U.S. leader in certifying fresh fruits and vegetables for both good handling and growing practices to ensure food safety, took three Oregon growers on a visit to EurepGAP to investigate sustainable agricultural production in Europe and certification programs that are in place. “Oregon is already far ahead of most of the U.S. in understanding how to best market our products using the concept of sustainability to draw customers,” according to the assistant director of the agency. “But if we are going to be world class, we need to understand global trends in sustainability certification and related marketing efforts.”
• The American Institute of Baking, headquartered in Manhattan, Kansas, has developed a variety of audit programs and labels designed to guarantee safe processes aimed primarily at certifying baking companies. Their Bakers Quality Seal certifies food safety and product quality in the baking industry. However, in response to international concerns, AIB developed a comprehensive audit, Quality Systems Evaluation, which starts with raw materials. Their Food Safety Agricultural Audits, at $850 a day plus expenses, provides on-site third party verification, covering ranch/farm/land history, fertilizer use, HACCP program, water quality, pest control and management of agrochemicals, personnel practices as they pertain to Good Agricultural Practices, and cleaning practices.
Rationale for the Project
“EurepGAP” is one of several pre-farmgate private sector protocol systems currently in use or in development in Europe and elsewhere. These protocol systems remain largely unknown in the United States, though large American-based companies are participating in their development through their international subsidiaries. The protocols are designed to assure consumers that the food they buy is produced only by farmers who observe an array of standards relating to food safety, environmental protection and/or social justice. As such, they have the potential to determine how, where, and by whom food is grown.
Moreover, because these protocols are largely outside the scope of government oversight, they can give large food companies or alliances thereof an ability to control access to global markets by imposing uniform production standards and certification requirements on farmers around the world. These protocols will be brought to the United States by their multinational sponsors. As currently designed, without an understanding of the threats and opportunities and a conscious effort to shape the protocols that will be imposed, the burden of compliance will be disproportionately heavier on small and medium sized American farmers – perhaps too heavy to bear. Therefore it is essential that steps be taken to gain a clear understanding of these threats and opportunities, and subsequent actions to bring the views of U.S. farmers to the table.
Threats
The widespread imposition of private sector protocols on agriculture will require intricate record-keeping and extensive changes in on-farm production practices. These practices are likely to be especially costly to small and medium sized farmers in terms of time, greater care, the cost of very detailed record keeping, increased cost in animal production, investment in more sophisticated equipment and training, and changes in production methods. The greatest threat of these protocols is that farmers will not be able to pass increased costs along to processors, retailers or consumers but will be expected to absorb the new costs with no increase in prices. Unless there is a conscious response by the agricultural sector in the U.S. to the protocol trends outlined in this proposal, private sector globally harmonized standards will join generations of advancements in agricultural technology in making small and medium sized farms untenable.
At the very least, small and medium sized farmers need to be at the table when protocols to guarantee safe food, a healthy environment, and decent treatment for workers and animals are drafted. There are better and worse ways, from the point of view of small and medium sized farmer, to accomplish the goals of the protocols. Over the next few years it is likely that EurepGAP and a variety of competing national, industry, consumer-driven, retail-driven, environment-driven and farmer-driven standards will be harmonized. In order to be part of any final international protocols which will gain dominant acceptance, it is imperative that U.S. small and medium sized farms begin to understand the importance of international private sector protocols and assist in drafting protocols that will allow them to stay in business while accomplishing the purpose of the protocols. If there are reasonable protocols in place in American agriculture, international bodies are more likely to take our farmers’ concerns into account when they are harmonizing existing protocols. If not, the chances are great that carefully researched international expectations will be imposed on small and medium sized American farmers.
Opportunities
At best, a concerted effort by small and medium sized farmers could turn to their advantage the changes in agriculture brought on by consumer demand, marketing of non-food aspects of agricultural production, and private initiatives imposed on agricultural production. There are opportunities in a sustainable agriculture brand. There is a potential for lowered costs from lowered inputs, the potential to market the care and positive image of the small farmer in the food chain, and a new opportunity to differentiate their products from mass produced commodities raised on large farms.
Project Objectives: Research
We plan to do the research in a rational sequence, with each step giving us information required to go to the next step. The sequence of research tasks is:
First, we will do a comprehensive literature search to identify and document the major global private sector protocols, industry protocols and American private sector protocols currently in place. All members of the team will participate in the literature search.
Next, we will interview protocol executives who have been involved in developing or administering some of the major private sector protocols with strong track records (EurepGAP, CIES, FARRE, QPM and others).
Following this, we will interview executives of American firms in Europe (McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, DelMonte, for instance) which are involved in drafting, meeting or enforcing private sector protocols.
Then we will interview European farmers working under protocol obligations, as well as representatives of European farm, consumer and environmental organizations to determine actual impacts on small and medium sized European farmers. (We have preliminary indications, for instance, that some farmers in Prince de Bretagne, a large vegetable cooperative in France, have experienced market losses as a result of protocol requirements.)
Next we will interview decision-makers in the American food industry to discover what current production protocols they demand from producers who they buy from and what their future expectations are about using or expanding production protocols. These sessions will include both large chain food retailers and smaller grocery stores; multinational food companies that already have production protocols with producers (such as Frito-Lay, Gerber, and General Mills); domestic food companies that may or may not currently require production protocols but supply markets that might value the use of production protocols; and regional food companies that might not be aware of the potential for development of production protocols in the industry.
The above industry research will be conducted primarily by the Principal investigators, Dr. Brent Sorenson and Jerry Nagel.
Survey of U.S. Consumers
Finally, based on the literature search and interviews with protocol, retail and food company executives, we will devise a survey instrument to document the expectations of consumers regarding the kinds of guarantees promised by private sector protocols, and the potential impacts of these protocols on producers.
Consumers across the nation will be surveyed to understand the value they place on the need for a production protocols to direct how their food is produced. The survey questions will be based on current protocols currently being used or proposed. To conduct the data collection of consumers across the United States we will contract the services of a full-service market research firm that has expertise in consumer research for the food industry. A company such as Opinion Dynamics Corporation with offices in Cambridge Massachusetts is an example of such a research company which has provided a preliminary cost assessment and brief outline of the parameters of the survey. Following successful project award, we will release a request for proposals that will be awarded on a competitive bid basis.
The survey will be conducted in two phases. The first phase will be limited to three or four questions that will be included in an existing periodic survey that routinely surveys consumers. Phase I will allow us to test the concept of the survey and provide feedback on the relevance and commensurate value of the questions. The data collected from the survey will allow us to further develop and refine the more detailed survey. Questions asked in Phase I might include the following type of questions.
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, rank your confidence in the safety of the food you purchase?
2. Who you do believe is responsible for the safety of the food you purchase?
3. Do you have any expectation that the food you purchase is produced under established production protocols?
4. How valuable is it for you to know that producers follow production systems that address environmental protection?
Using an established market survey company that regularly works with retailers, distributors, associations, commodity boards, and other organizations in the industry will help us ask appropriate questions to effectively and efficiently collect accurate and reliable data from the questions asked.
In Phase II we propose to conduct 15 to 20 minute interviews of 1000 primary shoppers in households throughout the United States using random digit dial (RDD) methodology. A sample size of 1000 households provides an overall margin of error of 3.1% at a 95 % confidence interval and be sufficient to allow substantial subgroup analysis, including breakdowns by demographic, geographic, and behavioral criteria.
Survey of Agricultural Producers
U.S. food producers will be surveyed to understand how they view the impact of production protocols on the ability of small- to medium-sized producers to meet the demands. The survey questions will focus on the desired outcomes of production protocols already in place or those under consideration. The 14 categories, given below, which are used by EurepGAP in their on-farm protocols will provide a general structure for the kinds of items to be included in the survey questions for both producers and consumers.
1) Traceability
2) Record Keeping and Internal Self-Inspection
3) Varieties and Rootstocks
3.1) Choice and variety of rootstock
3.2) Seed/rootstock quality
3.3) Pest and disease resistance
3.4) Seed treatments and dressings
3.5) Propagation material
3.6) Genetically modified organisms
4) Site History and Site Management
5) Soil and Substrate Management
5.1) Soil mapping
5.2) Cultivation
5.3) Soil erosion
5.4) Soil fumigation
5.5) Substrates
6) Fertilizer Use
6.1) Advice on quantity and type of fertilizer
6.2) Records of application
6.3) Application machinery
6.4) Fertilizer storage
6.5) Organic fertilizer
6.6) Inorganic fertilizer
7) Irrigation/Fertigation
7.1) Predicting irrigation requirements
7.2) Irrigation/fertigation method
7.3) Quality of irrigation water
7.4) Supply of irrigation/fertigation water
8) Crop Protection
8.1) Basic elements of crop protection
8.2) Choice of chemicals
8.3) Records of application
8.4) Pre-harvest intervals
8.5) Application equipment
8.6) Disposal of surplus application mix
8.7) Crop protection product residue analysis
8.8) Crop protection product storage and handling
8.9) Empty crop protection product container
8.10) Obsolete crop protection products
9) Harvesting
9.1) Hygiene
9.2) Packaging/harvesting containers on farm
9.3) Produce packed at point of harvest
10) Produce Handling
10.1) Hygiene
10.2) Post-harvest washing
10.3) Post-harvest treatments
10.4) On farm facility for produce handling and/or storage
11) Waste and Pollution Management, Recycling and Re-Use
11.1) Identification of waste and pollutants
11.2) Waste and pollution action plan
12) Worker Health, Safety and Welfare
12.1) Risk assessments
12.2) Training
12.3) Facilities, equipment and accident procedures
12.4) Crop protection product handling
12.5) Protective clothing/equipment
12.6) Welfare
12.7) Visitors safety
13) Environmental Issues
13.1) Impact of farming on the environment
13.2) Wildlife and conservation policy
13.3) Unproductive sites
14) Complaint Form
The producers will be surveyed by Agricultural marketing students at University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC), under the direction of Principal Investigator Dr. Brent Sorenson, Assistant Professor in the Agriculture Department. Dr. Sorenson teaches Agribusiness Marketing, Marketing Research and Managerial Economics. UMC has a long tradition of educating students in Agricultural production and marketing, working with local producers and working with the Northwest Experiment Station on research, education and outreach to the farming community of the region. The involvement of UMC in the survey will provide a high level of credibility and interest for producers to participate in the survey. The producer group will focus on progressive producers who are interested in differentiating themselves from traditional commodity production. We will work with a producer alliance called FarmConnect. FarmConnect is a cooperative that has over 700 producer-owners from the upper Midwest who formed the cooperative to find new ways to adapt their production to fit market needs. The mission of FarmConnect is: To improve the profitability of producer owners by aggressively identifying, creating, and meeting market needs through strategic relationships with processors and end-users. The ability to survey a self selected established group of producers focused on providing what the market is searching for provides an excellent mechanism to assess the impact of different protocols on the ability for small- to medium-sized producers to individually and collectively address protocol demands.
Data Analysis
Results of the surveys will be analyzed using standard statistical treatments. The data will be summarized to identify the similarities and differences between the cost for producers to implement different production protocols and the amount of value consumer’s place on different protocols. The data will be grouped into four different categories and plotted on a four quadrant diagram to help illustrate the interaction consumer value versus producers implementation cost.
The four categories will be label quadrant 1, 2, 3 and 4. Implications of data that fall into each category might include the following scenarios:
Quadrant 1: Scenario A: The consumer assigns low value for this production protocol and the cost for the producer to implement the protocol is low.
Quadrant 2: Scenario B: The consumer assigns low value for this protocol and the cost to the producer to implement the protocol is high.
Quadrant 3: Scenario C: The consumer assigns high value to the protocol and the cost to the producer to implement the protocol is low.
Quadrant 4: Scenario D: The consumer assigns high value to the protocol and the cost to the producer to implement the protocol is high.
Assessment of the four scenarios provides both opportunities and threats. In scenarios A and C where the cost to for the producer to implement the protocol is low, there are opportunities for the producer to provide value to the consumer. In scenario B where there is low value to the consumer but high cost for the producer to implement the protocol there would be little reason to include the protocols. The real threat comes where there is high value placed by the consumer and the cost to for the farmer to implement the protocol is high. In this case, it may be necessary for producers to work cooperatively to provide infrastructure or systems where the cost of implementation can be distributed over a broader production base.
Potential Research Obstacles
The most difficult problem associated with conducting this type of research as in any kind of survey is getting accurate data collected from the interview. The other potential obstacle is getting a representative sample of the population.
Industry Research: This portion of the research presents some challenges due to the proprietary nature of food company information and a potential unwillingness to unveil their practices. However, both Dr. Sorenson and Mr. Nagel have extensive networks in the food industry and will work together to obtain the appropriate contacts and information. They also plan to work with companies which are already participating in broad protocol development efforts such as EurepGAP.
Producer Survey: The potential obstacles in surveying producers is reduced because we have a pre-selected progressive group of farmers (FarmConnect) interested in participating in this type of activity. These producers have already demonstrated a willingness to adapt to a changing environment and an openness to finding ways to implement protocols or different practices efficiently.
Consumer Survey: Pitfalls associated with surveying consumers will be minimized by employing a commercial company which does consumer food surveys for major food companies on a daily basis.
Project Objectives: Outreach
The second objective of our proposal is to make the knowledge gained in our research available to small and medium sized farmers, the general public and government policy-makers. Our outreach efforts will have four components: general education, University education, a national forum, and strategic responses to the trend towards private sector-driven protocols.
We will write a paper containing the findings of our research and make that available to USDA, farm organizations, appropriate agriculture, consumer and environmental NGOs, Congressional leaders in agriculture, leaders of the major private sector initiatives, and major newspaper, television and radio outlets. We also expect to make several presentations based on our research findings.
In addition to general outreach, we believe the emergence of private sector protocols has implications for University education. The development and implementation of third-party-audited private-sector protocols will require trained third-party certifiers. Currently third-party certifiers in this type of work are people who hold baccalaureate- or graduate-level degrees. Demand for third-party auditors for agricultural production-oriented protocol systems will provide an opportunity for UMC—and many other institutions affiliated with agricultural research and training—to incorporate the results of our research into Agricultural Business, Agronomy and Animal Science degree programs, thereby providing leadership in training graduates for this new career option.
Thirdly, we will organize and co-sponsor a National Forum on Private Sector Protocols. The purpose of this national dialog on private sector protocols is to educate the farming sector about the imminent impacts of private sector protocols on American agriculture and to offer an opportunity for producers to begin formulating an organized response. The Forum is an opportunity to ensure that small and medium sized farmers are at the table as global private sector protocols are being put in place. For co-sponsors of the Forum, we will seek to collaborate with national farm organizations, USDA, national retailers and processors, universities with strong interest in either global marketing or small farm vitality, and many local projects loosely gathered under the SARE umbrella. We will seek both financial and organizational support from co-sponsors. We anticipate that, in addition to communicating the results of our research, speakers will include leaders in the major European private sector initiatives, executives of American corporations with experience in developing or administering protocols, U.S. farmers in small and middle sized enterprises, representatives of small farmers in Europe impacted by protocols, representatives of both European and American consumer and environmental non-governmental organizations, and government representatives.
Finally, based on the research identifying the major threats and opportunities to small and middle sized farmers from third party audited global private sector protocols, our report will recommend some strategic responses. These proposals would be a working document towards a series of draft protocols to minimize the threats and maximize the opportunities for small and middle sized American farmers. The strategic responses we will suggest will be, How can small and medium sized farmers take consumer concerns about the environment and other social goals into account while remaining economically viable? Another way of putting the question is, How can small and medium sized farms remain sustainable in an era of third party audits of global private sector protocols?
This section of our report will be the starting point for break-out groups at the stand-alone National Forum, as well as for smaller group discussions at regional Farm Bureau and Farmers Union conferences. Our co-PDs will be available to speak to agricultural groups, chambers of commerce, and University colloquia or classes. We would also hope to interest public radio in doing a story based on our research as a way of stimulating broad conversation about private sector protocols.
Conclusion: New Knowledge & Anticipated Outcomes
The results of this work will support or contradict the hypothesis that private-sector protocols being implemented in Europe, South America and Africa will come to the United States and that the cost of compliance will disproportionately fall to small and medium sized farms. At minimum, the Project Directors anticipate the results to indicate a need to provide outreach and education concerning these protocols to American farmers. Should the hypothesis be confirmed by this work, bold strategies to mitigate the identified threats (primarily in quadrant B, above) and capture emerging global market opportunities (primarily in quadrant C) for small and medium sized farms will be recommended.
Structural change in food production, distribution, and retailing systems is being fueled by globalization of industries and markets, diminishing barriers to international trade, and evolving consumer preferences and priorities. People are demanding more than nutritious, safe and wholesome food. A growing body of evidence suggests that consumers want to know where their food comes, how it was grown, and that those responsible for its production share their social and environmental values.
The European food production protocols to be studied in this work appear to offer their private-sector “owners” a socially acceptable and politically expedient advantage in defining, capturing and protecting markets by restricting access to them. While the interests of America’s small and medium sized farms have been well represented in most matters of agriculture and food policy, these protocols are largely outside the reach of government oversight. They are not purposed to benefit farmers and have no inherent obligation to do so.
Private-sector protocols have the potential to seriously and negatively impact farm viability and rural community well-being. However, with good information and direction, they can instead create opportunity for small and medium sized farms, processors, and marketers. Accordingly, this work will suggest strategies to influence production protocols such that they bring new prosperity, not more hardship, to rural agricultural communities.
