LEAF Marque is a farm assurance system, showing that food has been grown sustainably with care for the environment. The new LEAF Marque Standard v15.0 has now been published and has been audited from the 1st January 2020.
We are becoming increasingly aware that agriculture worldwide is facing one of its greatest challenges: to produce enough nutritional food to fulfil the needs of our future population, while at the same time, protecting the environment and human health.
Finding and implementing realistic and innovative solutions to this challenge, requires the involvement of a wide range of parties across the food chain – farmers, retailers, researchers and NGO’s.
The LEAF mission is to inspire and enable sustainable farming that is prosperous, enriches the environment and engages local communities. The principles of Integrated Farm Management (IFM) underpin the requirements of LEAF Marque certification, as set out in the LEAF Marque Standard. IFM is a whole farm business approach that delivers a more environmentally sensitive and sustainable farming. Modern technology combined with traditional methods are used with the goal of delivering a prosperous farming business that enriches the environment and engages local communities.
Over the last six years, we have seen steady improvements in how LEAF certified producers are managing their soil and water, conserving energy, protecting their crops, enhancing wildlife habitats and reaching out to their local communities.
The LEAF Marque standard requires a farm to demonstrate IFM principles that are both site-specific along with continuous improvement across the whole farm including 9 key areas: Organisation and Planning, Soil Management and Fertility, Crop Health and Protection, Pollution Control and By-Product Management, Animal Husbandry, Energy Efficiency, Water Management, Landscape and Nature Conservation and Community Engagement. ML3 Technical has built up an easy to use portfolio of documents that set out the key points for the plans you will need as part of the LEAF audit.
By using a document that has already been tried and tested by other growers to successfully pass audits, if offers you an easier way to comply with the increasing demands of the LEAF Marque Standard.
Contact us for more information on how we can help you and your farm to make life easier whilst complying with the LEAF Marque Standard.