Leading Harvest, a U.S.-based nonprofit which promotes sustainable farming and food production, is launching a pilot program in Australia.
"With the launch of our Australian pilot program, Leading Harvest continues blazing the trail in proving to managers, investors and the supply chain that agriculture can drive sustainability outcomes at scale and that these outcomes can be independently verified through a third-party auditing process," Kenny Fahey, the organization's executive director, said in a news release. "Our standard is quickly scalable across states, continents and hemispheres because it is designed to complement and work in tandem with other sustainability efforts while also empowering land managers, farmers and ranchers to determine the best way to achieve a sustainable outcome on their unique operation."
Leading Harvest developed a farmland management standard that can be used in a framework for sustainable farming practices throughout the world, the release said.
"The launch of our Australian pilot program represents an important step in our goal of developing and implementing a single sustainability standard that can be adopted by the global food production supply chain across continents," Oliver Williams, IV, chair of Leading Harvest's board of directors, said in the release. "Applying an independently audited universal standard assures success in achieving sustainable outcomes – whether grain and other agricultural commodities are grown in Queensland or in Nebraska."
In the United States, Leading Harvest has worked with growers and land managers to use a third-party audited certification standard for sustainable farming, the release said.
"More than 1.3 million acres of U.S. farmland across 29 states and encompassing more than 90 crop types are already enrolled in the Leading Harvest Standard, just one year after its formal launch," the news release said.
The organization has "the first scalable, industry-wide solution to urgent issues facing us – from climate change and biodiversity to the resilience of our cropland's soil and community," the news release said. "The rapid adoption of the standard underscores the enormous global interest in sustainable assets."