Unilever jumping on the regenerative bandwagon.

[Poorbuthappy]

Unilever defines Regenerative Agriculture Principles: ‘Without consensus it’s difficult to have alignment… it was important to start the work’

Unilever has gone live with new Regenerative Agriculture Principles (RAPs), a framework that outlines ‘five priority areas’ the company says are ‘in most urgent need of action and where we can generate the biggest impact’. FoodNavigator spoke to Giulia Stellari, Sustainable Sourcing Director at...

www.foodnavigator.com

Setting there own definition

Some pretty spurious figures in there, like "livestock and crop farming use 80% of the world's fresh water" How is that even considered worth printing?
And Salatin, Brown, Perkins etc might take issue with the claim it takes 100 - 400 years to build 1cm of soil.

 

[ShooTa]

i'd blame my ancestors but the company directions been wrong for years....
(some distant relative was a leverhume.)

also how much microplastic/chems do we consumers throw down the drian via washing machines/dishwashers/the sink/bath etc with their products.

 

[Henarar]

Some pretty spurious figures in there, like "livestock and crop farming use 80% of the world's fresh water"

if its used why are sea levels rising?
And where does it go ?
Farming has been going on for thousands of years so that is a lot of water used up.
Its a wonder the English channel hasn't dried up

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Unilever defines Regenerative Agriculture Principles: ‘Without consensus it’s difficult to have alignment… it was important to start the work’

Unilever has gone live with new Regenerative Agriculture Principles (RAPs), a framework that outlines ‘five priority areas’ the company says are ‘in most urgent need of action and where we can generate the biggest impact’. FoodNavigator spoke to Giulia Stellari, Sustainable Sourcing Director at...

www.foodnavigator.com

Setting there own definition

Some pretty spurious figures in there, like "livestock and crop farming use 80% of the world's fresh water" How is that even considered worth printing?
And Salatin, Brown, Perkins etc might take issue with the claim it takes 100 - 400 years to build 1cm of soil.

Very little is "used" in livestock production, it is only applied on it's way through the system.

Livestock systems overwhelmingly use "Green" water anyway.

 

[Treg]

A chemical company makes out it's environmentally friendly

 

[GeorgeK]

also how much microplastic/chems do we consumers throw down the drian via washing machines/dishwashers/the sink/bath etc with their products.

There seems to be some (but not enough) acknowledgement of plastic synthetic fibres from clothes getting into water, but I wonder how much we breath in? You know when the sun streams in through the windows sometimes in a way that allows you to see all the 'dust' floating in the air, I bet that's mostly plastic fibres from clothing, carpets and furniture. Where are the studies looking into how much of this gets trapped in our lungs and what it does? I imagine natural wool fibres would break down completely in our lungs, back into nitrogen from whence they came

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

A chemical company makes out it's environmentally friendly

Even worse, it's set out to tell us producers how we should become environmentally friendly.

Worse still, it's claiming that nobody is defining regenerative so it's doing it on our behalf when, in fact, many individuals and organisations already broadly agree on what defines regenerative.

 

[Treg]

Even worse, it's song out to tell us producers how we should become environmentally friendly.

Worse still, it's claiming that nobody is defining regenerative so it's doing it on our behalf when, in fact, many individuals and organisations already broadly agree on what defines regenerative.

I think it's called passing the buck, " ooh look at us so squeaky clean ( because we use detergents) but those meddling farmers haven't got a clue, we'll show them how to be squeaky clean like us"

 

[Tim G]

I like the phase 'irrigation based on water availability'. Is that not the whole purpose of irrigation?!

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

I like the phase 'irrigation based on water availability'. Is that not the whole purpose of irrigation?!

Yes. If they'd said "aiming to minimise or remove any need for irrigation by ensuring full effectiveness of the water cycle" then it would be more credible....

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Even worse, it's set out to tell us producers how we should become environmentally friendly.

Worse still, it's claiming that nobody is defining regenerative so it's doing it on our behalf when, in fact, many individuals and organisations already broadly agree on what defines regenerative.

This exactly.

 

[martian]

Unilever defines Regenerative Agriculture Principles: ‘Without consensus it’s difficult to have alignment… it was important to start the work’

Unilever has gone live with new Regenerative Agriculture Principles (RAPs), a framework that outlines ‘five priority areas’ the company says are ‘in most urgent need of action and where we can generate the biggest impact’. FoodNavigator spoke to Giulia Stellari, Sustainable Sourcing Director at...

www.foodnavigator.com

Some pretty spurious figures in there, like "livestock and crop farming use 80% of the world's fresh water" How is that even considered worth printing?

They add up all the rain that falls on pasture or crop land and then attribute that to the beef or wheat or whatever is being produced. Nobody questions it, it gets trotted out by every armchair warrior to justify their position as if the rain would fall somewhere else if the cows weren't there.

Funnily enough @ShooTa , Unilever have quite a good reputation for trying to do the right thing, they looked after their workers in the olden days when not everybody did, building Port Sunlight to house them amongst other things. They are now a 'B Corporation' which title is only awarded to companies which match Purpose with Profit and manage to jump through various hoops. That's not to say they can't do better, but there are many worse organisations...

 

[Poorbuthappy]

They add up all the rain that falls on pasture or crop land and then attribute that to the beef or wheat or whatever is being produced. Nobody questions it, it gets trotted out by every armchair warrior to justify their position as if the rain would fall somewhere else if the cows weren't there.

A nonsense position in itself, but even then, they also state at least 1/3 of the earth's non ice covered land area is used for livestock and cropping, so 80% of fresh water is used in that 33% area?
As I say, not even worthy of print.

 

[ShooTa]

ohh indeed - waybackwhen companies were worth a damn - the lever towns (of which there were many) were fantastic and pretty groundbreaking in terms of what they brought to the workers.

 

[Jungle Bill]

It’s all very well defining regenerative principles but will they regenerate anything?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

It’s all very well defining regenerative principles but will they regenerate anything?

Exactly. At that level it's all greenwash. I don't give a hoot whether a business is certified as passing some "regenerative" threshold, only that it is actually improving the overall average of its ecological process cycles (carbon cycle, water cycle, energy flow and biologial diversity). If, on balance, they are not improving then they are declining and that is NOT "regenerative." How does that relate to Unilever (or Nestle or PepsiCo etc) selling a product they have concoted in a factory from highly processed ingredients for profit?