Eckert Frozen Foods obtains Leading Harvest – Farmland Management Standard (FMS) certification with zero no non-conformities noted.
What is Leading Harvest’s Farmland Management System
It is an outcomes-based agricultural sustainability certification program created and maintained by Leading Harvest, a U.S. nonprofit organization recognized as the leader in sustainable farming practices and on-site verification by leading consumer product companies like Nestle.
How does it work
It creates a common language for agricultural sustainability across the global supply chain. Leading Harvest is unique in three critical aspects: it is outcome-based, third-party assured, and designed to be universally applicable across all crops and all geographies.
Rather than the industry standard checklist-based approach, the indicators focus on management systems. This allows the farmland manager freedom within a framework to determine their pathway to meet the objectives.
The Sustainability Principles
The standard is organized around more than a dozen sustainability principles for farming, including: sustainable agricultural stewardship to improve crop production, maintaining or enhancing soil health, protecting water resources, protecting people and the environment, managing waste and agricultural chemicals, and providing safe and fair working conditions.
Third-party auditing
In addition to third-party verification, Leading Harvest requires that the certifying bodies themselves be accredited to certify management systems according to internationally recognized accreditation standards.
Eckert’s audit was conducted by Averum, an ISO 17021-1 accredited certification body, whose auditors spent several days between the growing fields and reviewing management systems to validate growers’ practices and record keeping.