Since its official launch in May 2011 at the European Spice Association conference in the Netherlands, the worldwide Sustainable Spices Initiative (SSI) has grown from four small founding companies to comprise major global players such as McCormick, Unilever, and Olam. By the end of 2013, SSI seeks to finalize the creation of a globally accepted sustainability standard for the production of spices, as well as a producers’ training and support program for participating companies and countries.1 Major steps toward reaching these goals are already underway.
Jan Gilhuis, the senior program manager of the Sustainable Trade Initiative’s (IDH) spices program who coordinates SSI activities, explained how the SSI program got started. The Netherlands-based companies Verstegen Spices and Sauces, Euroma, Intertaste, and Unispices approached IDH — a convener of coalitions of front-running companies, civil society organizations, and governments to transform markets toward sustainable production and consumption worldwide.
“This is when they came to IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, to ask whether we could help structuring, coordinating, and co-financing this joint initiative,” said Gilhuis (email, January 25, 2013). “IDH agreed but only if the platform would agree to expand way beyond Dutch SME’s [small and medium enterprises]. This resulted in the present Sustainable Spices Initiative, which at this moment counts 10 companies as members, of which four are major international trading and processing companies (McCormick, Unilever, Jayanti, and Olam). SSI already represents a major share in the market.”
In 2011, IDH offered an initial co-investment of €1.1 million (approximately $1.5 million USD) to help sustain the program for four years. With co-investments from private SSI member companies, the total investments now surpass €2,200,000 (approximately $3 million). Support from IDH will allow SSI to focus on the main sustainability issues faced by the spice industry: loss of biodiversity, use of agrochemicals and pesticides, and poor labor conditions.2
American Botanical Council Board of Trustees member Tom Newmark, an owner of Finca Luna Nueva, a certified biodynamic and organic spice estate in Costa Rica, said that creating a sustainability program for the spice sector is particularly timely. “Habitat loss, irresponsible wildcrafting, growing demand, and climate change all put pressure on medicinally active plants (‘MAPs’),” he said (email, January 25, 2013). “Many MAPs are now threatened and the stresses are ever more severe.”
Further, small farms looking to sustainably produce spices are facing increased pressure to grow more lucrative crops.
“Spice farming in the growing countries is being economically challenged by the dramatic increase of other high income crops such as rubber, cassava, wheat, etc.,” said Al Goetze, chief spice buyer for McCormick Global Ingredients, Ltd. (email, February 19, 2013). “Higher costs associated with farm land, labor, and energy are impacting decisions on what farmers are growing.” With a growing trend in industrialized European and North American nations to offer sustainable products to consumers, SSI eventually plans to produce all 34 culinary spices recognized by the European Spice Association in a sustainable manner. The sheer number of products makes the task more difficult than other popular sustainably produced products, such as coffee or tea. “With spices you have so many different kinds and also you have to deal with small farmers, who are growing spices in their fragmented small plots of land, so it is totally different,” said Nanto Prasetyo, a chief executive of Unispices.3 In 2012, SSI took a major step toward creating a sustainable spice standard by joining with the New York-based Rainforest Alliance (RA), a conservation organization dedicated to preserving world forests through the adoption of sustainability programs. Instead of creating a new set of standards for spices, SSI chose to adapt the Rainforest Alliance’s Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) standards, which will address soil and water conservation, wildlife and forest protection, responsible waste management, and the prohibition of dangerous pesticides and genetically modified organisms.2 The first phase of SSI, which will continue through the end of the year, will focus on seven key spices — pepper (Piper spp.), chili (Capsicum spp.), ginger (Zingiber officinale), turmeric (Curcuma longa), vanilla (Vanilla planifolia and V. spp.), clove (Syzygium aromaticum), and cassia (Cassia spp., sold as “cinnamon”) — produced in four main countries: Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Madagascar. “The final version of the local interpretation[s] of the Rainforest Alliance for the seven [spices] mentioned above are expected to become publically available during 2013, to start with pepper in first quarter of 2013,” said Gilhuis. “This is open for any supply chain actor to start working on compliance and developing certification. Based on the basic SAN standard the first RA pepper certification has been announced [in January], from a farm in Indonesia. RA is not the only standard to be applicable or desired by the end users, but the intention is that RA standard will in general be the reference for comparison.” In reaching this goal, SSI currently is focusing on increasing international participation, assuring market commitments, and implementing small-scale producer programs through support from the IDH-managed Sustainable Producers Support and Innovation Fund. “Supply chain actors like processors can propose support projects for their own suppliers base, based on cost sharing/co-[financing],” said Gilhuis. “We just started, and have four projects ongoing, two on sustainable black pepper in Vietnam, one on sustainable clove production in Madagascar, and one on sustainable cinnamon [Cinnamomum spp.] in Indonesia. New projects on chilies in India are expected to start soon.” Although the projects are still in the start-up phase, Gilhuis hopes SSI will eventually become a self-sustaining program. “In the long term all IDH programs aim to reach full market transformation to sustainable production,” he said. “In the case of spices, [IDH] gives support in what we understand to be the promising first phase of front-runners taking and sharing the responsibility to create a common field and model, defining a good reference for sustainability on the one hand, creating markets, and support to producers to become sustainable. Eventually, this process will assume its own power and dynamics and sustainability will be a norm for the sector.” For more information about the initiative, or for companies interested in making a commitment to sustainable spices, Gilhuis recommends contacting SSI, IDH, or the Rainforest Alliance for further details. —Tyler Smith References
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Friday, 22 April 2016
HerbalEGram: Volume 10, Number 3, March 2013 Sustainable Spices Initiative Seeks to Transform Mainstream Spice Industry
