Blog post
BLOG - Sustainability pushers
LEI is a real all-rounder. For instance, a short LEI report was published in March this year addressing the question of what dog and cat owners thought about organic food for their four-footed companions. However attached people are to their barking and miaowing housemates, and however much importance they attach to the quality of the food that they put before them, for most people buying organic dog and cat food is a step too far. It is therefore not a priority to give the dog or cat organic food.
The Utrecht-based researcher Esther Plantinga recently demonstrated in her contribution to the lecture series Framing Food that owners and their dogs exhibit similarities; the dogs owned by people who are overweight often also become overweight themselves. The sometimes striking mimicry seen between dogs and their owners on the street therefore appears to have a scientific basis. If the owner's own diet and snacking habits are reflected in those of their pet, it appears logical that there is so little interest in organic pet food; most owners themselves rarely eat organic food.
If we add these morsels of wisdom to the outcomes of the 2013 Sustainable Food Monitor (Monitor Duurzaam Voedsel 2013), this offers hope for the increased sustainability of animal food and feeding. The data, collected once again by LEI colleague Johan Bakker for this Sustainable Food Monitor, demonstrate that consumption of sustainable food has once again been increasing over the past year. It appears that the economic recession has not halted sales of sustainable food, while the market for conventionally-produced food has actually been showing signs of shrinking.
Consumers have therefore not given in to the pressures of the crisis; they can be considered allies of sustainability. However, this does not necessarily mean that consumers are the major driving force of sustainability. I frequently repeat myself on the point that it is unfair and unrealistic to interpret demand-driven regulation and chain reversal as indicating that consumers are in control and are responsible for increasing the sustainability of the food market. Such an interpretation takes no account of the fact that the choices of consumers are to a great extent dependent on their environment. Calling upon consumers to buy sustainable food is an empty appeal, doomed to end in frustration – regarding sustainability in general and consumers in particular – if behavioural change is disconnected from an enabling environment.
Various sustainability pushers are needed to create and cultivate an enabling environment that provides a generous supply of sustainable foodstuffs and gives them ‘food dignity,’ and providing facilitating circumstances that help make sustainable food the easy and self-evident choice.
To start with, there are the insiders in the food world. Sustainability pushers are active in all forms and sizes. At corporate level, sustainability managers are still frequently scarce – Unilever is an important exception to this rule. Besides Unilever, the rapidly emerging social enterprises, which have a central focus on social profit, can be considered as shining examples and sources of inspiration for the agricultural and food sectors.
Besides outsiders such as opinion formers, journalists or politicians, who can be counted among the current or potential important and well-known sustainability pushers, there are also more unexpected outsiders. Here I am referring to financiers, for the time being operating primarily behind the scenes. Under the common denominator of what I would like to call decent financing, I see (or predict) the movement among investment and pension funds, such as the PGGMs and ABPs of this world, towards giving their social responsibility a more serious form and content, and offering greater transparency about it. This is in keeping with a trend in which it is modern rather than other-worldly to say that green and responsible investment is not the exclusive reserve of the ASN and Triodos banks of this world. And if we see the Bill Gates Foundation as a trendsetter, then there is a gleaming future in which financial bastions become real and explicit sustainability pushers. That will give sustainability a great boost.