In this episode of the “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast with the Equitable Food Initiative, Stephanie Teclaw, quality program manager with RPE, a grower-packer-shipper of conventional onions and potatoes, joined LeAnne Ruzzamenti, EFI director of marketing and communications, to talk about how a sustainability course from EFI provided the resources and framework to analyze her company’s current sustainability state and ensure a supportive culture and vision were in place.
Teclaw said a motivation for taking the EFI course was to understand where RPE could evolve in its sustainability practices.
“The course in general just served as such a great barometer for us to understand our current sustainability state, and it really helped reinforce our direction and our specific sustainability priorities as being relevant,” she said.
Teclaw said other reasons for taking the course were to help RPE understand what kind of improvements would be necessary and how RPE could support its partners while meeting customer expectations. She said RPE wants to help its growers in meeting sustainability goals.
“We want to not only be able to support them through this, but [also] to represent them the best we can and to take what they’re doing and what RPE is doing and communicate that adequately within our own messaging,” she said. “We have to be able to read between the lines as well and understand where the industry is headed next in the sustainability realm and be able to react that much more quickly and ideally have that foundation set up for us as well.”
Customers tend to ask RPE growers for sustainability measures like greenhouse gas emissions, Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, environmental indicator reports, Integrated Pest Management certifications. Teclaw said one customer wants third-party-verified IPM from major growers.
Another big focus for RPE customers is packaging and material composition. Teclaw said she thinks some customers might start to ask for specific field information, fertilizer inputs and water usage in the future.
“Not everything that customers are asking for are required,” she said. “Some of them are voluntary. … Yes, we may not need to do it right at this moment, but we definitely have to understand that it could be a future requirement and what does it entail for us to ready ourselves for it.”
Teclaw said while some participants struggled with telling the story of sustainability, a major takeaway from the course was to identify successes within EFI and then identify and prioritize those things that need improvement.
“Sustainability at times can intimidate a lot of folks and you have to be somewhat vulnerable during those discussions,” she said. “I definitely appreciated how all of the organizations that participated were open about their journeys, and it was clear that we were all in that together. We were all proactively working towards what sustainability means for each of us.”
To listen to the full episode, use the podcast player embedded above.
