At the Honor the Harvest Forum, we are planting the seeds of a sustainability movement to create a climate-smart and resilient food system
Honor the Harvest Forum

At the Honor the Harvest Forum, we are planting the seeds of a sustainability movement to create a climate-smart and resilient food system

What an amazing week! U.S. Farmers and Ranchers in Action (USFRA) together with The Aspen Institute brought together some 250 leaders from the agriculture and food sector at Honor the Harvest, an unprecedented gathering of the top minds in the food and ag value chain. With that kind of talent in our “virtual” room, I couldn’t be more excited about the vision, commitments and actions unfolding.

This week and next, in several high-energy, intensely focused sessions, we are rolling up our sleeves and getting to work on co-creating a vision for a resilient, sustainable food system that can meet the needs of this decade and beyond. We already felt a sense of urgency at last year’s Honor the Harvest, when we gathered at a farm in Newburg, Maryland, and dedicated ourselves to launching a new Decade of Agriculture in 2020 with the kind of bold, accelerated action required to meet the food and agriculture challenges of the next 30 years.

Little did we know what this year would bring. In the past year, our farmers and ranchers have had to face more extreme weather due to climate change, more uncertainty and economic hardship. And then, earlier this year, our lives and economy were turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve all had to adjust to a new normal. But at the same time, there has continued to be unbelievable perseverance among our farmers and ranchers and across the food/ag sector; we’re still standing.

All of these challenges have only deepened the urgency we feel to reach for better, to not settle for the status quo. To do more. There has never been a more important time in our history to co-create the sustainable food systems of the future. This year has brought a level of clarity for the need for action. There can be no further delay in bringing all our innovation to bear in the creation of a sustainable food system. We need leaders to not just step up on behalf of their organizations but to step out to join with leaders from across the entire sector.

Because if there’s any silver lining to the challenges of 2020, it is that we need each other more than ever. We need community, collaboration and consensus building. That’s what Honor the Harvest is all about. By convening the food and ag sector, our aim is to accelerate economically viable, climate-smart agricultural solutions that will provide society with the food, fiber and energy it needs for healthy people, healthy communities and a healthy planet.

I expect the conversations and commitments at Honor the Harvest will plant the seeds of a sustainability movement, advancing solutions that replace the sector’s carbon footprint with a positive handprint.

We will be building on the Agriculture Climate Partnership (ACP) that we kicked off in February this year with the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), to put U.S. agriculture on a pathway toward net negative greenhouse gas emissions. This partnership is mobilizing farmers, ranchers, scientists and other stakeholders to deploy climate-smart solutions that reduce GHG emissions in agriculture. The ACP was conceived building off from the conversations at Honor the Harvest in 2019. And I know that more is yet to come!

Honor the Harvest would not be possible without the support of our sponsors: National Pork Board, United Soybean Board, Cargill, Dairy Management Inc., Wells Fargo, Native American Agriculture Fund, Bader Rutter, FFAR, Bayer, Frog, Corteva, McDonald’s, Dairy West, Edelman, Nebraska Soybean Board, Nutrien, OCP North America, Ruan and Tyson.

And I’d also like to thank our tireless and dedicated USFRA team for all the hard work that has been going on behind-the-scenes for months to make sure the challenges of running an event like this virtually goes off smoothly and effectively. We’re all getting so much better at collaborating virtually.

And that brings me back to where I started. By the end of this forum, through the power of real-time collaboration, we hope to have ignited a leadership network that can take on the challenges of the next six months and build the next decade for the food and ag sector.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can get involved, please reach out!

Congrats on a great meeting! You and your org are making a difference for farmers, agriculture and sustainability! Nice work.

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Janet Helms

Global Sustainable Sourcing Animal Health & Welfare Senior Manager

3y

Great week, great work, more to do!!

Rob Dongoski

Partner, Food & Agribusiness Leader at Kearney

3y

Great week attending Honor the Harvest conversations. Very well organized and meaningful dialog on what is needed for the future of our food system. Well done U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action !!

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