For Canadian produce growers, the ever-increasing demand for sustainability-related data is leaving little time for actual farming.
This is audit fatigue and it’s a big problem, according to Canadian Produce Marketing Association. It’s so big, in fact, that it could undermine the very trust that audits and other sustainability assurance tools seek to create. This is the “Assurance Paradox.”
On Sept. 16, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association released a report that details these problems. It also proposes an industry-led effort to stem the current deluge of sustainability audits, questionnaires and other assurance checks Canadian producers are drowning in.
“Our members are deeply committed to sustainable practices, but they are increasingly burdened by a reporting system that is fragmented and inefficient,” says Ron Lemaire, president of the CPMA.
“This report is our industry’s playbook for moving from a reactive to a proactive position. By developing a unified framework defined by the grower community, we can ensure that sustainability metrics are practical, relevant and drive meaningful outcomes, turning the burden of reporting into a source of innovation and competitive advantage.”
The Problem: Audit fatigue and the Assurance Paradox
The report — “Making Our Own Playbook: An Industry-Led Response to the Challenge of Sustainability Reporting and Audit Proliferation” — came out of an industry workshop held during the 2025 Canadian Produce Marketing Association Convention and Trade Show.
“The workshop brought the Assurance Paradox to life, with participants from across the supply chain expressing a clear and consistent message: They are consumed with reporting instead of focusing on lowering their environmental footprint,” says Garland Perkins, principal at Fresh Endeavors Consulting, who facilitated the workshop.
The Assurance Paradox cycle starts with what the report calls the credibility gap.
“Global supply chains are complex, many sustainability metrics are intangible, and self-reported corporate narratives are often met with skepticism,” the report reads. “In response, third-party auditing and certification have become critical mechanisms for building trust and verifying claims.”
Unfortunately, since the scope of sustainability is so large and there is little agreement on what sustainability even means in the specifics, these efforts to build trust have proliferated. As have the audits, certifications, standards and questionnaires they use.
Dan Duguay, senior director of sustainability at CPMA, points out that the demands of the current sustainability assurance landscape mean many large growers employ “a full-time sustainability person who’s tasked with managing and navigating this.” That strategy is often beyond mid- or small-sized growers.
It quickly becomes too much, and growers effectively get burned out. This is audit fatigue.
Worse, according to Duguay, despite the effort growers put into these sustainability assurances tools, they almost never get feedback on how they are doing, sustainability-wise. So, they don’t get any direct sustainability benefit from all the supposed sustainability work they are doing.
“Farmers, overwhelmed by duplicative requests, may resort to minimalist box-ticking or, in the worst cases, provide incomplete information simply to satisfy the immediate demand, thereby undermining the very trust the system was designed to create,” the report summarizes. “The more assurance is sought through these fragmented means, the less reliable and meaningful that assurance becomes.”
The Proposed Fix: The Environmental Charter
The report proposes to address these problems with an industry-led, outcomes-based, metrics-first framework CPMA calls the Environmental Charter.
“The Environmental Charter is a way to describe the things that matter when looking to provide the assurance to a buyer that you’re doing the right things and you’re doing those things right,” Duguay explains. It can be applied across produce crops and regions since it focuses on key sustainability areas, he says.
The five key sustainability areas are:
- Water use efficiency, prioritizing efforts based on withdrawal intensity and sourcing risk.
- Energy use efficiency, prioritizing efforts based on consumption intensity and emissions contributions.
- Packaging decisions that reduce environmental impacts and balance food-related outcomes like safety, shelf life, affordability and availability.
- Material use efficiency that emphasizes responsible procurement, use and management of materials throughout the materials’ supply line.
- Land management practices that maintain or enhance soil health, ecologically sensitive areas and threatened or endangered species.
Duguay likens the framework to a report card.
“You give the kids in class their report cards and they take five subjects,” he says. “Jimmy, let’s say, got 90 in math, but he got 70 in English, so he knows where he’s got to do work.”
So, too, can the Environmental Charter’s framework serve as both a demonstration for stakeholders of where a grower is in their sustainability journey, but also as a tool for the grower to indicate where they need to direct their efforts, according to Duguay. This feedback element is sorely lacking in current sustainability assurance efforts, he adds.
According to the report, the framework’s metrics-first approach is fundamentally different from current sustainability standards, which focus on practices and practice verification. Similarly, it focuses on the operation level, rather than on the product level, making it crop agnostic.
Being applicable across the diversity of fresh produce is exceptionally important, according to Duguay, because doing sustainability “right” is going to vary depending upon crop and location.
“Water matters. Soil health matters. Biodiversity matters. Emissions matter. Material use matters. Packaging waste matters. All of it irrespective of the commodity,” he says. “However, what you do right when you’re doing berries is going to be different than what you do right when you do apples.”
The charter’s blueprint program is already working
The current proposal is part of an effort that started in 2024, and it is still in early stages. Duguay says CPMA will meet with industry leaders later this fall during the group’s Fall Harvest 2025 to discuss next steps.
He also says he sees the proposed charter as being a realistic path forward for fresh produce to deal with audit fatigue. The reason for this optimism is, he says, that it’s already working.
“It’s starting to happen in potatoes,” he explains, noting that the blueprint for the Environmental Charter came from consultation with the Potato Sustainability Alliance.
According to the PSA website, over 550 potato growers in the U.S. and Canada are enrolled in its sustainability program. According to the CPMA report, the PSA program went through several iterations before hitting on a successful model. Now, the program covers more than half of the potato acres in North America.
Duguay says the PSA program has also seen impressive acceptance from large food service groups such as Sysco, McDonald’s and Wendy’s. It is also radically lessening the audit fatigue of participating growers, with the CPMA report noting that reporting takes only about 20 to 30 minutes annually after the first year.
“It is also an approach that is promoting continuous improvement because it is providing the growers the feedback,” he adds.
The framework of the PSA program has been serving one produce commodity. CPMA hopes to learn from PSA to create a framework that is portable to all fresh produce crops.
According to the report: “The success of the PSA’s benchmarking tools proves that when producers are given data, they can use to improve their own business, their engagement shifts from reluctant compliance to active participation.”
Wyatt Maysey, director of sustainability at Taylor Farms and one of the sponsors of the workshop that spawned the CPMA report, says a framework like the proposed Environmental Charter, modeled on the success of the PSA program, will allow growers to focus their sustainability efforts on making tangible improvements.
“It enables us to provide credible, consistent data to our customers while using that same data to become more efficient and resilient. This is a win-win for the entire supply chain.”
