From the US-based Sustainable Herbs Program

Greetings!

Urban migration is one of the biggest threats to the longterm supply of botanicals for the herb industry. Younger generations are not interested in carrying on the difficult work of growing or harvesting medicinal plants for a global market that often pays them pennies for their efforts.

With the SHP Living Income Working Group, I've been exploring how the Sustainable Herbs Program can best bring conversations about living wage and income, social equity, and rural livelihoods into the botanical industry. The next SHP ToolKit Webinar which will focus on certifications as a tool for addressing these socio-economic challenges emerges from these conversations. It should be a rich and thought-provoking conversation and I hope you can join us.

Certifications as a Path to Sustainability? A Conversation about the Opportunities and Limits of Certification.

Jan Von Enden Head of Group Sustainability - Supply Chains at the Martin Bauer Group; Kevin Casey, Co-Founder and CEO of Banyan Botanicals; and Yuca Waarts, Senior Researcher at Wageningen University will be joining me for this discussion. We will focus on economic inequities in sourcing botanicals, how certifications can help address these issues, the limitations of these certifications, and the responsibility of companies to address these challenges.

Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (Note time)
Register for free here


 
Speakers

Jan Von Enden is Head of Group Sustainability – Supply Chains at Martin Bauer Group. He has a background in tropical agriculture and spent most of his career in coffee producing countries, such as Peru, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea and others. As part of the Executive Management of a coffee focused family foundation, he has been designing and leading industry – governments supported sustainability programs with the objective to enhance the economic and social well-being of small-scale coffee farming families worldwide. Having joined the botanical sector recently, he is now dedicated to apply his experience in a new setting.

Yuca is a senior researcher sustainable value chains at Wageningen Economic Research in the Netherlands. She is an expert with regard to measuring the impact of innovations and services and design of interventions geared towards improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and workers in developing countries. With a main focus on commodity value chains (cocoa, tea, coffee, palm oil). She has an MSc in agricultural and environmental economics.

Kevin grew up in Southern California and studied Philosophy and Business at the University of San Diego. He was first introduced to yoga and meditation on a trip to India and deepened his practice while on surfing adventures in Central America, Indonesia and Australia. He attended The Ayurvedic Institute where he studied with Dr. Vasant Lad and later worked on staff in their herbal pharmacy before going on to start Banyan Botanicals with Scott Cote in 1996. 

Thanks so much to SHP donors and ABC members who make these webinars possible! And thank you as always for your ongoing support.

All the best,

Ann

Ann Armbrecht, PhD
SHP Director

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