Feb 12, 2011

Floriculture Members Pull Out of Sustainability Standard InitiativeSource: GPN reporting

Last week, several committee and subcommittee members representing floriculture resigned from the Leonardo Academy’s initiative to develop a sustainable agriculture standard for the American National Standards Institute. Late last week, GPN’s consulting editor Dr. Jim Barrett called editorial director Tim Hodson to tell him that he, along with three others, had resigned from the Leonardo Academy’s initiative to develop a sustainable agriculture standard for the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Barrett said the two other committee members were Will Healy at Ball Horticultural Co. and Mark Yelanich at Metrolina Greenhouses, as well as subcommittee member Doug Cole at D.S. Cole Growers. Barrett said in the discussions he had with other committee members, it seemed like the adoption of a practical ANSI standard that would be beneficial to the floriculture industry did not seem likely.

In his resignation letter to Leonardo Academy president Michael Arny, Barrett said that he still “feels strongly that improving the sustainability practices of all of agriculture is important for agriculture, our society and the environment. However, I feel the direction the Standards Committee is taking will not lead to the types of changes needed by the majority of agriculture.”

Barrett said that the disparate views of the different organizations on the committee made it challenging for members to reach any kind of a consensus on the standard that would be meaningful to the floriculture industry and that he felt “it was time to move on.”

Work on this standard began back in 2007 and, since then, the standard as well as the standard committee has gone through many different iterations. Last October, 10 committee members resigned from the committee. At the time, the groups that those individuals represented expressed frustration with the biases against modern agriculture and in the structure that had been set up to develop and write the standard.