Rabobank, a global food and agribusiness bank, has named Taylor Farms among the recipients of its annual Rabobank North America Leadership Awards.
Rabobank honored leaders from the three winning — Taylor Farms, Campbell Soup Co. and Full Harvest — companies during the bank’s Leadership Awards Summit in New York City.
“The sustainability, safety and security of the global food supply are critical challenges that put the food and agribusiness industry at the forefront,” David Bassett, head of Rabobank Wholesale Banking North America, said in the release. “Today, we celebrate three outstanding companies that are setting the bar high through strong leadership, innovation and social responsibility, factors essential to driving the responsible growth of their businesses and the future of food.”
Corporate leadership
Taylor Farms received the 2023 Rabobank Award for Excellence in Corporate Leadership. Rabobank says this award recognizes a large-scale market leader in North America that generated strong business results while creating a lasting impact on its sector and world.
Rabobank honored the family-owned Salinas, Calif.-based salad grower with production facilities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, for its leadership through food safety and automation efforts in processing and logistics.
The bank said Taylor Farms’ strong year-over-year growth, tangible execution of sustainability efforts and cohesive collaboration with startups and local communities stood out among its peers. Rabobank also acknowledged the company’s work to mitigate its environmental impact and to award scholarship funds to the children of its employees as a strong commitment to social responsibility.
“This award reflects our team’s success, dedication, amazing response time and entrepreneurial attitude across the organization,” Bruce Taylor, chairman and CEO of Taylor Farms, said in the release. “It is with great passion and love for our business that we dedicate ourselves to providing 265 million servings of fresh, safe and healthy food each week to kitchens across North America.”
Leadership in sustainability
Campbell Soup Co. received the 2023 Rabobank Award for Leadership in Sustainability. The award recognizes organizations that transformed agriculture through its products and encouraged greater business, environmental, social and governance sustainability, according to the release.
The Camden, N.J.-based Campbell Soup Co. reported $9.4 billion in net sales in 2023. Rabobank said the company demonstrated its leadership in sustainability through sustainable agriculture initiatives designed to improve soil quality, biodiversity, climate resilience and access to water resources while making farming more productive and profitable. Campbell’s set science-based targets to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions 42% by fiscal 2030 and reduce Scope 3 emissions by 25% within the same time frame, the release said.
In 2021, the company launched Full Futures, a five-year, $5 million school nutrition program. Rabobank said one of Campbell’s key sustainability accomplishments include commitments to animal welfare, improving packaging to increase recycling and reduce plastic waste, as well as establishing new metrics to measure nutritional performance, affordability and accessibility.
Emerging leadership in innovation
Rabobank named Full Harvest as the winner of its 2023 Rabobank Award for Emerging Leadership in Innovation.
Full Harvest is a B2B produce marketplace that connects farmers with produce buyers with expertise in reducing on-farm food loss while improving profitability. The San Francisco-based company has sold more than 125 million pounds of produce since its inception seven years ago, mostly surplus and imperfect fruits and vegetables that would have otherwise gone to waste. In the process, the company says it has saved nearly 4 billion gallons of water and 20 million kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e, emissions.
“At Full Harvest, we are innovating every day by digitizing the produce supply chain end to end for the first time ever through our B2B produce marketplace for all grades, including surplus and off-grade,” Christine Moseley, founder and CEO of Full Harvest, said in the release. “This award is a testament to the hard work of the Full Harvest team over the past seven years and support from trusted partners like Rabobank.”
About the awards
Rabobank said its awards celebrate large corporations and fast-growing emerging companies that set the standard for industry stewardship, sustainability and innovation across the food and agribusiness industry as well as the energy transition movement. The awards also recognize companies meeting today’s global economic challenges and answer the call for greater social responsibility and community involvement, according to the release.
An independent panel of judges representing industry, academia, nonprofits, media and the investment world evaluated the finalists, the release said. The panelists judged the finalists based on criteria unique to each category.
