Linking Environment and Farming (LEAF) is to open a consultation on its standards next month to coincide with plans to join big names in a global association for social and environmental standards.
The move to join the ISEAL Alliance comes ahead of the release of LEAF’s revised standards on
1 October 2012, two years after the last review.
The ISEAL membership, expected to be confirmed by the end of the year, will see the LEAF standard join a line-up that includes Fairtrade Foundation, Rainforest Alliance and the Soil Association.
The consultation will feature two six-week online surveys, which will look at what should be included in the standard and then review those ideas.
LEAF, which has 2,500 members in 46 countries, has already been named as an aspirational standard for next year’s Olympic Games. The target is to reach 10,000 members by raising the profile of the organisation.
LEAF commercial manager Jeremy Boxall said: “This is the opportunity for the industry and our members to comment on the standard. ISEAL has a code of practice for setting environmental and social standards and more interestingly, a code of practice for assessing the impact. We are working to these for our standard as well.
“This will give us more integrity as a scheme - we need to be up there too. I don’t think we have really touched it in terms of what we can do on precision farming and resource management.
“We can get a lot more out of crops with innovative technology. One of our aims is to have all the major retailers sell LEAF marque produce in the same way as they would have organic or Red Tractor products to give consumers the choice.
“Our challenge is to get consumers engaged,” Boxall added.
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