True Value Language helps to accelerate the Agrifood transition 

The current agrifood system significantly contributes to climate change, biodiversity loss and animal suffering, soil degradation and water stress, while simultaneously becoming increasingly vulnerable to the consequences of these interconnected crises. When reporting on their sustainability efforts, farmers, retailers, financiers and governments often use different sustainability indicators, definitions and verification methods, creating fragmented data flows, high administrative burdens and limited comparability of impact. 

The Dutch TVL (True Value Language) Coalition was established to address this fragmentation by creating a shared sustainability language for the Dutch agrifood sector. As TVL’s project management office and transition strategy sounding board, NewForesight supports Rabobank, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture and a pioneering group of agrifood sector organisations in developing a common measurement foundation for sustainability performance on farms, including harmonised definitions, calculation rules and standards for verification and assurance. 

TVL is a pre-competitive sector initiative that will help to improve transparency, reduce administrative burden throughout the chain, and help create the conditions for effective chain steering, financing and policy alignment. TVL opens the door for a fair financial reward for farmers’ sustainability efforts, tackling one of the central barriers for the agrifood systems’ sustainability transition. 

In the past three months, NFC has co-written, and guided the writing of, three core documents that define TVL’s role, its processes for rule setting, and its side constraints on data sharing. NFC is supporting TVL in its strategic positioning within the larger field of existing national and international sustainability data initiatives.