Over the course of three working decades I have never heard such a statement from a Ministry of Agriculture: “My job is to really listen and to deliver public support that stimulates producers and business to thrive sustainably”.

We are quite proud to partner with Mexico’s visionary young leaders like Jorge Narvaez, Santiago Arguello, and Vera Espindola in the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA). They are working day and night (one of our meetings ended at 10:00PM!) to establish science-based metrics that allow a faster and better understanding of their diverse sustainability efforts. They know that they need to measure the actual impacts of their efforts and together we are establishing the initial stages of simple systems that offer clear perspectives of the real-time performance of hundreds of millions of dollars of public investments across crops as diverse as maize, palm oil, and coffee.

Mexico is just one of the important places where such results-oriented development is blooming. In our September 2017 newsletter there are some perspectives from the Global Forum on Agricultural Research and Innovation (GFAR), from Peru and the UNDP, Switzerland’s move toward Sustainable Cocoa, new developments for our work on Resilience, and a perspective on the recent World Coffee Producers Forum.