Mon­i­tor­ing and Evaluation

We are proud to intro­duce LEAF’s fifth Glob­al Impacts Report ​‘Deliv­er­ing More Sus­tain­able Food and Farm­ing’ which cel­e­brates the achieve­ments of LEAF Mar­que cer­ti­fied busi­ness­es in deliv­er­ing more sus­tain­able food and farm­ing. Inspir­ing and enabling every­one we work with about sus­tain­abil­i­ty is one thing, but this needs to be demon­strat­ed through mon­i­tor­ing and evaluation.

So we can assess the effec­tive­ness of our work and be cer­tain that it is advanc­ing envi­ron­men­tal change, we com­mis­sion, con­duct and under­go a range of eval­u­a­tions. The find­ings of these stud­ies pro­vide vital insights which we use to revise and adapt the LEAF Mar­que assur­ance sys­tem. This leads to bet­ter results of our work, for the ben­e­fit of all LEAF Mar­que cer­ti­fied busi­ness­es. The most recent study looks at the effect and impact of LEAF Mar­que in the deliv­ery of more sus­tain­able farm­ing. The study was com­mis­sioned by LEAF and car­ried out by the Coun­try­side and Com­mu­ni­ty Research Institute.

The LEAF Mon­i­tor­ing and Eval­u­a­tion (M&E) mis­sion is to increase the under­stand­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal, social, polit­i­cal, organ­i­sa­tion­al and oth­er impact of LEAF’s activ­i­ties. The con­tin­u­ous M&E pro­gramme aug­ments the sci­en­tif­ic basis, ben­e­fits, val­ue and the impar­tial­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and inclu­sive­ness of LEAF’s activ­i­ties. A Pub­lic Sys­tem Report on Impact can be found below.

We have sum­marised our Mon­i­tor­ing and Eval­u­a­tion pro­gramme here at LEAF into a use­ful overview tak­ing a high lev­el look at what our pro­gramme includes. 

LEAF Mar­que: increas­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of more envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able farm­ing prac­tices through Inte­grat­ed Farm Man­age­ment (IFM).

With­in the con­text of Inte­grat­ed Farm Man­age­ment, the LEAF Mar­que sys­tem aims to improve: 

- Soil man­age­ment to enhance soil qual­i­ty and soil health

- The resilience of crop­ping systems

- Man­age­ment of water use and water quality

- Ener­gy effi­cien­cy and ener­gy use

- Waste management

- Man­age­ment of live­stock to enhance the environment

- And enhance the man­age­ment of native habi­tats and biodiversity

These aims work along­side LEAF’s beyond cer­ti­fi­ca­tion work which aim to: 

- inspire and enable sus­tain­able farm­ing that is pros­per­ous, enrich­es the envi­ron­ment and engages local communities

To find out how we are deliv­er­ing against these goals, see LEAF’s Glob­al Impacts Report.

LEAF and LEAF Mar­que con­duct a range of stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions to sup­port our con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and we will pub­li­cise these oppor­tu­ni­ties. Do you have com­ments, ques­tions or com­plaints about the M&E sys­tem? If so, please con­tact us.