**London**: Tesco has partnered with the LEAF Marque certification scheme to support British farmers in achieving net zero emissions. The initiative aims to standardise sustainability reporting, making it easier for growers to track progress and improve efficiency in their agricultural practices.
The transition towards achieving net zero emissions is increasingly acknowledged as a collective challenge that encompasses various sectors, including agriculture. In the UK, farmers are now being encouraged to collectively pursue sustainability goals that can be systematically quantified and measured. Such initiatives aim not only to track progress but also to glean insights for ongoing improvements across the agricultural landscape.
Traditionally, farmers in the UK have faced hurdles in understanding the effectiveness of their sustainability initiatives due to the presence of multiple, disparate reporting platforms, standards, and measurement frameworks. This proliferation of systems has often resulted in duplicated efforts while complicating the ability of entities in the supply chain—like retailers—to compare data effectively.
Rebecca Schofield, a produce technical manager at Tesco, highlighted these challenges. “We were always given data and information from our suppliers on carbon neutrality and what they’re doing to make efficiencies, but it was very difficult for us to analyse because we had so many different schemes and standards being presented to us,” she explained.
In light of these obstacles, Tesco has formed a partnership with the Linking Environment and Farming (LEAF) Marque certification scheme over the past three years, aimed at enhancing sustainability standards. Schofield elaborated on this initiative, stating, “Growers want to protect their land to pass on to the next generation… The LEAF audit process is a way to formalise this and to drive continuous improvement.”
One notable example of a business engaging with these standards is Huntapac, a fourth-generation family-owned company that has been supplying Tesco with root vegetables for more than half a century. Huntapac is fully LEAF certified and serves as a LEAF demonstration farm. Stephen Shields, the company’s technical director, spoke to the advantages of having a common standard for sustainability. “I think if data is standardised and it’s consistent, then it offers a level of fairness. You’ve not got an outlier that’s showing a significant carbon reduction because they’re using a different platform,” he remarked.
As of now, all Tesco growers in the UK have achieved LEAF Marque certification, with plans for Tesco’s international growers to attain similar certification by the end of the year. Schofield noted that the information gathered through the LEAF framework assists Tesco in identifying key focus areas for better supporting their growers, ensuring access to relevant expertise. “It’s about evolving together, continuous improvement and not penalising people,” Shields added.
Despite the advances made through the LEAF Marque, the sector acknowledges that further improvements are still necessary. According to Shields, Huntapac is required to complete around 15 environmental audits annually for various customers, often adhering to different standards. He expressed the need for a simplification of audits to avoid the repetition of information submissions, suggesting that the introduction of centralised platforms could facilitate easier access to data for multiple stakeholders.
Tesco is taking steps to assist farmers in these areas. Through its Greenprint for UK Farming report, the retailer has called upon the government to establish a unified set of reporting metrics as well as a carbon reporting hub, aimed at streamlining data collection and ultimately assisting farmers in their efforts to achieve net zero emissions. This initiative illustrates Tesco’s commitment to fostering a more sustainable agricultural sector in collaboration with growers.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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