People making sustainability their business
Sarah Blanchard
Food Consultant | Building sustainability capability | Born at 330ppm
This article is about how I help people who work in food to drive their businesses towards sustainability. It fills me with hope for our future food systems!
No matter what role you play, you can have a positive impact on sustainability. Years in the trenches of corporates and consultancy have shown me how important it is that everyone pitches in to make a difference. Yet while most people I talk to want to do something, many don’t know how or are nervous taking their first steps. Some are already doing good work but are not sure how to scale it up.
Nothing is more uplifting than when someone realises that they CAN tackle the big challenges. When they know where to take action and how to scale their influence, sparks fly!
Read on and you’ll see examples where this is happening.
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Creating impact by sharing know-how?
As an independent consultant, I can spread my know-how with many more organisations and people who want to create change. One example I am particularly fond of, is my role as an assessor, accompanying groups of students on a Sustainable Food Production (SFP) executive leadership course.
Here, students take a holistic view of their organisation and examine its impact on food systems. They work out how to build resilient businesses while feeding people healthily and having a positive impact on nature and society.
I’m part of the remote team that checks students’ weekly progress as they consolidate their knowledge, evaluate their leadership skills and build this into an action plan relevant to their work.
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Understanding food system challenges and vulnerabilities
As citizens, we are demanding better and changing our ideas on how businesses can contribute positively.
Before we go further, some facts on food systems – scroll on if you know all this!
A food system is all the people, institutions, places, and activities that are part of growing, processing, transporting, selling, marketing, and eating food.
People transforming food systems face a considerable task, because what and how we eat has a huge impact on our’ and the planet’s health. Diet-related disease is predicted to cost the global economy $3 trillion a year by 2030. Food production employs more than 44 million children in dangerous activities, it contributes around 25% of planet-warming greenhouse gases and is the largest driver of nature loss.
These challenges also make food systems extremely vulnerable. As citizens, we are demanding better and changing our ideas on how businesses can contribute positively.
Our changing food preferences, climate and nature breakdown together with social injustice and increasing regulation, have triggered a major rethink of our food systems.
When we transform food systems, we can tackle the big sustainability challenges and begin restoring ourselves and our planet!
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Creating action plans?
There are some lovely lightbulb moments when they realise simple changes like adapting their communication style for a different team, can accelerate their sustainability plans.
If understanding these challenges is the first step, then knowing what they mean for an organisation, where to prioritise action and scale it up comes next.
During the course, our team challenges students’ action plans and crafts feedback, drawing on our experiences of working on different continents with diverse food businesses and people.?
Every plan is unique - it identifies where to target impact, who to collaborate with, and sets pragmatic objectives that consider each student’s sphere of influence. It’s exciting when they discover new ways to collaborate and extend their influence!
As well as understanding the facts, students examine their personal leadership style and find ways to be more effective. There are some lovely lightbulb moments when they realise simple changes like adapting their communication style for a different team, can accelerate their sustainability plans.
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Action plans made by real people?
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From a factory QA manager to a CEO, people from SMEs to corporates are figuring out how to scale their impact and collaborate towards sustainability within their organisation or sector.
By now you’ll be itching to know who’s doing all this good stuff! Perhaps you see similarities between your own role and these examples:
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From factory QA managers to CEOs, people in SMEs and corporates are figuring out how to scale their impact and collaborate towards sustainability within their organisation or sector.
Are you inspired? I am! Seeing these professionals ready to drive change is incredibly motivating. It’s a real joy being part of the SFP course education team and playing a small part in helping these bright leaders transform our food system for the better!
???? You can find details on the SFP course here: Sustainable Food, Production and Processing online short course.
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???? If you want to bring change and create a resilient, sustainable business, please get in touch.
Helpful information:
?? A leadership guide to sustainable corporate purpose: Leadership with a Sustainable Purpose
Sources in the article:
Head of Partnership -FACE
1 个月Nice to hear from you Sarah. My new role in FFC is about sustainability. FACE (Food security and agriculture center of excellence ) is an NPO arm of FFC with a vision “ Food security through yiled increase and climate smart agriculture
Sustainability Practitioner and Business Strategy Leader ? Director | Project Manager | Sustainability Strategy | Stakeholder Management | Team Leader | Business Analyst
1 个月Happy 2025 Sarah and many thanks for the kind words, and for sharing this. It is a privilege to work with you and all the assessors on the CISL course, and it is a pleasure to see how well the students develop their own thinking in this space. I do feel there is much being done to make progress on sustainable food and whilst we can always say (and find) more needs to be done, we should reflect positively on all this and celebrate those taking action. Real people are very much the solution and they need us all to help them succeed. The next cohort will start on March 19th with an induction week and I look forward to enagaging with all who sign up to be part of this.
Curious | Passionate about transforming UK supply chain | Food & Sustainability focused Leader | Methodical and Purpose driven | Innovation & Change and Product Development experienced| Cat parent
1 个月This is a great article, inspiring and motivating too. Thank you for sharing Sarah ????