SAI Platform recognises “Silver Equivalence” for RSB certified operators

Based on an independent benchmark SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment 2.0 recognises that RSB certified operators automatically achieve Silver Level

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform is a global initiative of the food industry for sustainable agriculture. In 2002, Nestlé, Unilever and Danone created the non-profit – SAI Platform, to facilitate sharing of knowledge and best practices to support the development and implementation of sustainable agriculture practices involving stakeholders throughout the food value chain. Today, the SAI Platform has more than 90 members.

The SAI Platform develops tools and guidance to support global and local sustainable sourcing and agriculture practices. Using its Principles and Practices as a starting point, SAI created and tested the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA). FSA covers all crops produced for food and beverage agricultural ingredients and consists of 112 questions based on sustainable farming practices recognised by the food and drink industry, plus a scoring mechanism that can be used for on-farm assessments. FSA scores sustainable agriculture on three performance levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold.

Update August 2017 – The RSB has now finalised the RSB certification Protocolfor complying with the “Gold” Level of the FSA. Operators who use this protocol will receive a 100% match to the FSA.

Operators in the food and beverage sector and those interested in supplying biomass to both biofuel/biomaterial and food/beverage supply chains will be interested in the protocol because the RSB helps operators that supply multiple markets to have combined audits.