Colors Foundation

FCRN interviews David Farrell

About Colors

Colors is primarily a fruit business, spanning the whole value-chain, from growing fruit on our farms, through to packing, shipping and marketing of our products. We market around 16 millions cartons of a wide variety of fruits around the world, which accounts for 8% of South Africa's annual fruit production. Over 60% of our exports are marketed through the large retail chains in the UK and continental Europe. Colors has its head office in South Africa’s Western Cape province and has offices in Belgium, Canada and the UK. Colors was formed in 1997 and has grown to become the second largest fruit exporter out of South Africa.

Colors Foundation

Informed by the visions and business ethos of the Colors Group, the Colors Foundation was established to develop and deliver a comprehensive sustainable business strategy. The Colors Foundation houses the sustainable business function. My work as head of this function is focused on initiatives to facilitate the shift of our company and supply-base to being a truly sustainable agri-enterprise. The Colors Foundation has three work streams, working on;

 

• Environment - soil, water, climate, food, energy, biodiversity
• Standards - to drive ongoing improvement of systems, standards and certification schemes in the fields of ethical practice, food safety, quality management and traceability
• Academy - providing education and social uplifting programmes to 600 people

More details on our Sustainable Business Function

Our work to explore sustainable fruit farming includes a number of projects:

Colors Environmental performance

Through a full Life Cycle assessment (LCA) study (undertaken with the Carbon Trust and using the PAS 2050 LCA methodology), we are measuring carbon emissions across our entire supply-chain. This has enabled us to understand where emissions are occurring and where we need to focus our efforts to reduce them.

We have begun field research to examine the use of biochar as a soil additive to increase soil health and to sequester carbon in the soil – we see this as a very promising intervention as we can use farm woody waste as our feedstock to produce the char and raise soil carbon levels, which are inherently low in our region (soil carbon is a key indicator of soil health). More details on this research are below.

Colors Standards: Social and ethical performance

Our Ethical Performance Improvement Strategy (EPIS) aims to drive continuous improvement in ethical performance on farms across our supply-base. For example, the strategy includes actions to ensure that national employment law is understood and followed, employment contracts are delivered, that the health and safety of the workforce is protected, minimum age restrictions in the workforce are adhered to and that sick leave entitlements are fulfilled. This has been delivered through our training programme which, to date, has included 24 ethical training workshops, attended by 200 farms and pack houses and 22 Colors Technical personnel.

Around 140 farms and pack houses have participated in an ethical audit. The outcomes of these audits are used to identify and implement further training and guidelines to assist producers and pack houses with the continuous improvement of good labour practices. To ensure that the process is full transparent, the audit information is available on SEDEX for retailers to view. SEDEX is an organisation to promote ethical supply chains across the world. We are using the results to identify and implement interventions to improve working conditions on farms.

Next, we are focussing on training workers and will implement a Passport to Work program. This provides basic awareness training on health and safety, hygiene, ethical codes and policies and procedures through a DVD (the material was developed by Acert Africa). The farm worker will also receive acknowledgement for participation in this training through a “passport to work” card, which they can show as proof of training when applying for a job.

Colors Academy projects

Through the Colors Academy, we are implementing an array of Social Development, Health and Education/training programmes on our owned farms and pack houses– the intention is to make these interventions available across our supply-base. The Colors Academy was established after we purchased a large apple and pear farm in 2003 and were confronted by a host of socio-economic challenges within the community living on the farm.

Whole farm sustainability

We are developing a Sustainable Farming Manual – aimed at capturing as much of the current body of knowledge around sustainable agriculture into one integrated and sensible guideline for fruit farmers. The intention is that it ultimately forms the basis of a management system for farms in South Africa. The project will be done in collaboration with WWF South Africa. We are currently in the process of raising the funds to support the development work as well as the piloting of it on farms. Our goal is to have this project completed by the end of 2011.

Bio Char work in focus

We see great potential and relevance of biochar as an intervention that could help us neutralize our supply-chain emissions while fundamentally improving the capacity and quality of our soils.

We are conducting a field trial at our fruit farm in Villiersdorp in the Western Cape. It is a full scientific trial with replications and design to allow full statistical analysis. Over the next 4 years, the trial will measure the impact of different rates of biochar application on fruit production, quality, nutrient uptake and so forth, as well as monitoring all aspects of soil health and the levels of carbon sequestered in the plants and soil. The trial has a second aspect in the form of a potting trial whereby we follow the exact same application rate paramenters but with three fast growing annual plant types – the intention is to speed up our learning (given that the field trial is with a perennial tree crops). More details about these trials can be found in this presentation, which is a collaborative project with the food retailer M&S.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We started looking at biochar after I met Dr Johannes Leamann of Cornell University in 2007 and this work is now headed up by Eddie Vienings, who leads our Environmental Unit. We have consulting and technology support from a Swiss innovations firm called Tulum (Ernst Schaltegger) and their affiliated organisation the Carbon Zero Foundation (Nando Breiter). They have supplied us with the recipes for the “Enriched biochar” we are applying to the soils in our trial.

Questions and ambitions

We are dealing with commercial farming operations (as opposed to small scale farmers) – our big question at the moment is; how do we make the clear business case and/or achieve the incentives to stimulate the broad-based uptake of practices that support the achievement of sustainable farms?

We are at the beginning of a long and never-ending journey. Our shorter term ambition is to stimulate a shift within our own supply-base which amounts to approximately 8% of fruit farms in South Africa. The entire fruit industry needs to shift as well, so our dream is that we become the catalyst for our whole industry.

Big questions for food climate research

For us the big question is: how should farming units be configured and operated so that they are able to bring about a significant contribution to communities and societies in achieving sustainability? This relates to farms being a nexus point of many fundamental drivers of sustainability; soil, water, climate, food, energy, biodiversity, socio-economic well-being… In our view, finding the model for sustainability at a farm level is an essential building block for communities and societies to achieve true sustainability.

Expertise and collaboration

We are particularly interested in collaboration on these projects with other actors within our supply-chain – particularly the retailers we supply (we have had some success with this approach already). We feel that we have the means to deliver products that increasingly embody true sustainability (i.e. that are the output of systems which are improving working conditions, protecting the environment etc) – this is in alignment with the proclaimed ambitions of retailers and therefore serves as substantiations of their claims. Retailers in turn can provide the critically needed leadership to spur on the development of sustainable agriculture (they sit with the power in the chain) and have the means to make financial contributions that can dramatically speed up adoption of the required practices.

As far as expertise is concerned, we have a strong network, but are always looking to strengthen/expand it further. We are happy to share our learning across this entire field. We now have very specific knowledge on carbon emissions across our supply-chain that some researchers may find useful. We are also some way down the road in terms of how the sustainable farming guideline should be structured and the content to be covered.

About the people in Colors

I joined Colors in 2001 and headed up the local marketing division for 4 years. I then moved into the role of Director for Strategy. As the pressure to respond effectively with the issues around business sustainability grew, the decision was taken in 2008 to have me head up a dedicated function with the aim to develop and implement an appropriate strategic response. I have a B.Sc Agriculture (Hortcultural Science), a Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing and an MBA.

Christelle Marais (B.Sc. Food Science) is the Head of Food Safety and Ethical Standards. Christelle Marais is the dedicated project leader responsible for identifying market trends and requirements to ensure sustainability within theColors Standards scope of theColors Foundation.

Susara Nortie (B.Sc. H.E.D.) is employed as the Head: Education and Training of theColors Academy. She has a special interest in developing an opportunity for each one to improve him/herself and is passionate about the concept of 'life-long learning'.

David Farrell (B.Sc Agric and MBA) is the Group Director: Sustainable Business. David has a special interest in integrated sustainable business practices.

Anna Oppel (B.A.H.E.D. and MA Afrikaans Literature) is the Chief Executive Officer ofColors Academy.

Thana Whitehead (D.Comm. Industrial Psychology) is employed as the Group Director: Human Resources and has a special interest in change management and leadership development.

Contact details

For further information about our work on sustainability and bio char please contact David Farrell. And for details on all our work, please visit our website.