Supply chain sustainability standards in temperate farming commodities

Could companies contribute to farmland biodiversity in temperate landscapes? Most of the business efforts to enhance sustainability in agricultural supply chains have been focused on tropics. Important temperate crops like cereals and oilseeds are left largely unchecked. This results in a missed opportunity to reverse biodiversity decline in about 47% of the world's cropland. But implementation of voluntary sustainability standards to restore biodiversity in temperate and Mediterranean biomes would require doing things differently than in tropical commodities. Temperate agriculture differs both in its operations (lack of divergence between staples and cash crops, crop rotation) and landscape context (lack of agricultural expansion frontiers, complex pressures on biodiversity). Consequently, agricultural certification and similar schemes need to be linked primarily to a unit of space rather than a specific commodity. However, necessary tools such as advanced criteria, metrics and data infrastructure are lacking in temperate agriculture, and their development depends on input from conservation scientists and practitioners.

Supporting information for Supply chain sustainability standards in temperate farming commodities consists of:

Dataset for Figure 1;

Additional information on methodology (VSSs uptake in retail industry) and sources (LEAF Marque case study, references for evidence of impact of feasible objectives for VSSs in conventional temperate agriculture).