Rominger Family Farm, Winters, California, August 2, 2003 – The Natural Step hosts some of the country’s leading analysts and practitioners of sustainable agriculture to consider the difficult question of how sustainable agriculture can be moved mainstream. Event participants represented growers, buyers, professors, economists, advocates, industry leaders, funders, and government agencies.

The high-level gathering marks a critical move in the launch of The Natural Step’s sustainable agriculture initiative, inspired by another Natural Step research project focused specifically on impacting the food, fish, and fiber industries www.naturalstep.org/research/f3.php.

The day kicked-off with a tour of the Rominger Brothers’ farm and time with Richard Rominger, who headed the California Department of Food and Agriculture from 1977 to 1982 and served as the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture for the USDA from 1993 - 2001 where he was instrumental in promoting sustainable agriculture.

Richard’s three sons discussed their desire to make their farming practices more sustainable and the challenge of finding processors and retailers who are willing to pay for the real value and cost of sustainable agriculture practices. Other participants joined in the conversation and the group spent the afternoon talking about the future, exploring obstacles and opportunities in promoting mainstream sustainable agriculture, and finding common ground. Additionally, participants discussed potential leverage points for change and identified opportunities in large companies and institutions to help catalyze change. The Natural Step briefly introduced its systems-based approach to analyzing agriculture and talked about the challenges and opportunities of current projects.

At the end of the day, the discussion concluded with the following assessment of the field:

1. Real obstacles to taking sustainable agriculture mainstream exist and are due to:

• a concentration of economic and political power that block sustainability efforts
• barriers to entry created by current production and distribution systems
• a lack of agreement on goals and strategies in the sustainable agriculture field

2. Optimizing public education on food and farming issues through on-going direct marketing efforts (for example, farmers markets) was identified as a lever to help create a demand for more large retailers to purchase sustainably produced food.

3. There are real opportunities to shift major food retailers’ purchasing practices, and there are associated concerns that such activities will impact smaller scale, community-based sustainable farming efforts.

The Natural Step will incorporate these important lessons into its ongoing research on sustainable food, fish, and fiber and its advisory services efforts with large institutions such as McDonald’s and others www.naturalstep.org/services.

For more information, contact:

Heather Sarantis
Research Associate, The Natural Step
hsarantis@naturalstep.org
415-318-8170 *318

About The Natural Step
Since 1989, The Natural Step has been guiding companies and governments onto an ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable path. An international advisory and research organization, The Natural Step works with some of the largest resource users on the planet to create new models of sustainable enterprise and tools designed to accelerate global sustainability.

For more information: www.naturalstep.org