News Sustainability
Skylark Foundation stops in 2020
Skylark Foundation will stop all activities from January 1, 2020, it will announce in a press release on Monday September 23. After almost 18 years, the curtain falls for the organization that focused on sustainable agriculture. Skylark was unable to find new financing options for member growers.
The number of participants in Skylark has fallen, which means that income has also decreased, it reports. The current structure and revenue model no longer match the way in which the chain, the sector, society and the government want to make the agricultural sector more sustainable. The end of the Skylark Foundation is therefore inevitable.
No new financing
The foundation has been looking for new financing options, but this has not led to concrete results. As of January 1, the foundation will therefore stop. What happens to, for example, the regional study groups it has in the Netherlands is unknown. However, the foundation emphasizes that it has not gone bankrupt. Current activities and meetings will be completed until 2020.
During its existence, Skylark managed to get major parties behind it to financially support participants in their investments in sustainability. For example, Suiker Unie had 'Pounds of Skylark sugar' and Heineken participated in sustainably grown malting barley. Skylark baking wheat was sold via Koopmans Meel. Another wheat project (Tritiko, via CZAV) was halted last year.
Discussion point
Skylark's activities, however, have also often been a point of discussion in the arable farming sector. Some arable farmers were critical of the 'sustainability' of their participating sector peers. Skylark growers themselves were also sometimes critical. In 2017, the discussion that their efforts were not sufficiently rewarded by Heineken. In 2017, during its 15th anniversary, CLM introduced a yardstick to quantify the sustainability of participating companies.
Niels van der Boom
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