The marketplace and consumers are increasingly seeking assurance of sustainable production practices at the farm level. As a result, several agricultural codes/standards/criteria have emerged to enable farmers to improve transparency of on-farm sustainability practices. Canadian farmers are global leaders in sustainable production practices, demonstrated through several commodity-specific initiatives.

As the landscape of sustainability assurance continues to evolve, there is an opportunity to collaborate to improve the experience for Canadian farmers. As such, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) leads a national effort to interview agri-food sector stakeholders on the drivers, opportunities, and challenges of providing evidence of sustainable production practices.

CFA now shares the Canadian Agri-food Sustainability Initiative’s (CASI) industry engagement report. The report provides opportunities for next steps for the Canadian Agri-food Sustainability Initiative platform development and engagement activities from Summer 2021 to Spring of 2023. This report summarizes what was heard from 129 agri-food sector stakeholders from across Canada.

CASI is a collaboration of Canadian agri-food sector industry leaders in sustainability. CASI will be developing an online platform to serve as a hub for sustainability programing in the Canadian agri-food sector. CASI will coordinate knowledge sharing on agriculture and agri-food sustainability and identify linkages between the current work happening in Canadian agriculture and agri-food to international sustainability standards. CASI will facilitate sharing Canadian successes globally by crediting farmers for existing management practices through benchmarking standard and program equivalencies on the online platform.

View and download the full report, executive summary, and policy brief in both official languages. Link here: https://www.agrifoodsustainability.ca/resources

Source:   Canadian Federation of Agriculture January 5, 2022 news release