The Connected Market:
Agrobiodiversity Supply Chain Self-Assessment Tool

An interactive tool helping food companies, restaurants, and consumers ask the right questions to support agrobiodiversity.

In a connected market, food purchasers learn to ask the right questions in sourcing ingredients so they can champion a food system aligned with their personal values and the missions of their companies—even when these ingredients come from halfway around the world.

The Connected Market:
Agrobiodiversity Supply Chain Self-Assessment Tool

A free to use tool that helps food companies, restaurants and interested consumers learn how to ask the right questions of producers and suppliers to better support agrobiodiversity.

The problem:
can we cure the blindness in global supply chains?

Food moves across the globe through supply chains that are mostly blind. Purchasers often have scant visibility into who grows our food, the practices they use, or the communities they support.

To deliver the benefits of a more agrobiodiverse food system, we must gain and retain the trust of all those involved in the cultivation, distribution, processing, marketing and consumption of food. Developing frameworks that support greater traceability and transparency in supply chains can help companies meet their agrobiodiversity objectives, allow consumers to better align their food purchases with their values, reward farmers who adopt more diverse, regenerative farming practices, and offer profoundly positive environmental impacts.

Connected Markets: Agrobiodiversity - Lexicon of Food

Are you a consumer who wants to learn more about the food you buy?
Or are you a buyer who wants to know more about the food you source?

Welcome to the Connected Market: your purchasing decisions matter.

Over half the world’s agricultural production comes from only three crops: rice, maize, and wheat. This lack of agricultural biodiversity negatively impacts human health, culture, and the environment, but when food purchasers can make conscious, thoughtful sourcing decisions and can envision who grows their food, an ingredient transforms from a commodity into a highly valued, mutually beneficial resource.

In a connected market, producers are empowered to deliver high quality goods at a fair price that support both their communities and the marketplace. By becoming a partner in this relationship, food purchasers can source ingredients that champion a food system aligned with their values – even when they’re halfway around the world.

To participate in a connected market requires not just being educated but becoming involved; tools that help food purchasers and consumers learn more about the ingredients they source and the right questions to ask can bring greater agrobiodiversity to supply chains, benefitting both people and the planet.

A connected market is a mindful market.

Douglas Gayeton

Co-Founder
THE LEXICON

Supply Chains and Agrobiodiversity

The global food system is so complex that we often get lost in its tangled mess. Twisted by marketing spin. Influenced by politicized subgroups. Chefs and restaurateurs struggle to balance the demands of an ever changing consumer landscape swayed by shifting headlines and the intricacies of an opaque supply chain. Confused, we often make purchasing decisions that compete with our values sending confusing messages back down through the supply chain.

The 10 Principles for Agrobiodiversity serve as a guide to understanding of the pathways towards a healthy food economy. Operators can use the guide as a reference tool in navigating their supply chain choices. For those motivated to hold themselves and their producers accountable it serves as a checklist providing clarity on values and practices. In the arms of a talented communications team these best practices can connect consumers to the positive impacts of their food purchases. A more informed chef with a supportive clientele can serve as a catalyst for positive change in local markets. A conscious brand with national or international reach can affect similar outcomes across a broader global system.

As a chef I believe food is at the center of everything we care about. As curators of culinary culture, we have the power to promote the food systems that pave the way for a more resilient tomorrow. The list of 10 Principles and the practices they represent offer us a clean template to align us around good food decisions. Every meal matters!

Erik Oberholtzer

Chef and Co-Founder
TENDER GREENS

Why create a tool to support agrobiodiversity?

While there is a lot of agricultural and cultural biodiversity in the world, we underutilize it in our food systems. This contributes to malnutrition, land degradation, and market vulnerability.

It is often difficult to find information that relates to questions surrounding crops and their contributions to agrobiodiversity. This difficulty is exacerbated by the myriad definitions of biodiversity and rapid increase in news and stories that traffic in oversimplification of biodiversity loss. It is especially challenging for food companies to know how to find resources or tools (or how to use them effectively) for evaluating specialty crops, ingredients, and/or products for purchase for various uses. Due to this deficit of universally agreed upon information supply chains often remain “blind,” leading to environmental and nutritional problems. The increase in production and support of diverse crops can enable new marketing opportunities, both locally and abroad, which can offer added value to producers and their communities, especially if they are accompanied by efforts to gain fair compensation through certifications or related programs that support fair benefit-sharing. Many of these efforts build on traditional or local knowledge, along with principles of agroecology. They include a mix of methods to build soil microbiology and soil health and reduce synthetic agrochemicals which can harm beneficial insects. These types of sustainable practices also help to build resilience to climate change.

Making the case for biodiversity

Food companies and entrepreneurs (including processors, manufacturers, retail, and food service) have begun to incorporate more diversity in their supply chains by reviving, sourcing, processing, and selling novel foods and ingredients that support biodiversity, including some that are called “neglected”, “minor”, “underutilized”, “orphan” or “reawakened” foods.

Although these many efforts help to make a difference and present important opportunities, there are still urgent needs to increase agrobiodiversity in food supply chains and to improve dietary diversity globally. One of the primary gaps identified by food companies and producers is the lack of information about the sources of supply and demand for unique crops that support biodiversity, and opaqueness of the supply chain. Therefore, supply chain transparency is an urgent necessity and an opportunity for food companies, producers, and for consumers as well.

Connected Markets: Agrobiodiversity helps to address and fulfill this need for greater transparency and clarity about biodiversity in food systems, and to create opportunities for innovative companies in the supply chain, local food producers, and communities to thrive.