Downforce Becomes Leading Harvest Activator
Mar-26-2025
Downforce joins Leading Harvest to help scale climate-smart agriculture solutions
Downforce Technologies has joined Leading Harvest as an Activator to accelerate the transition to more sustainable and resilient agricultural systems worldwide.
Leading Harvest is a non-profit organisation that operates one of agriculture’s most extensive sustainability frameworks, with over three million acres (1.2 million hectares) of farmland enrolled globally across more than 100 different crop types.
The Leading Harvest Farmland Management Standard provides a framework for improving agricultural sustainability with core principles ranging from environmental factors including soil health and biodiversity to social factors such as farm labour and protection of special sites. Through the implementation of the Farmland Management Standard (FMS), Leading Harvest is harmonising and mobilising the entire supply chain while also ensuring that companies are continuously improving their operations.
Leading Harvest Director of Strategic Partnerships, Rebecca Gildiner, said “We are thrilled to have Downforce Technologies as an Activator with Leading Harvest. We are excited about the value that they can bring to our membership and are looking forward to the shared impact that we can create together.”
“Certifying members must identify areas for improvement from one year to the next through our core principle of continuous improvement. This generates positive impact for farm businesses each year while ensuring sustainability efforts keep up with evolving scientific findings, agronomic knowledge, and societal expectations,” Ms. Gildiner said.
“Activators like Downforce Technologies play a major role in the Leading Harvest ecosystem to drive continuous improvement and support the community of sustainable agriculture practitioners. Activators assist our members in obtaining certification or measuring outcomes associated with their certification with use of their products or services.”
Downforce Technologies Head of Product & Business Development for the Americas, Luke Richards, said the company was looking forward to supporting the Leading Harvest community and furthering sustainability in agriculture.
“What we like about Leading Harvest is that they have a strong presence with asset managers and those who own the farmland and have the greatest interest in long-term prosperity and sustainability,” Mr Richards said.
“Other sustainability standards usually target the product coming from the farm, but our focus – the soil – doesn’t leave the farm, so targeting the asset just made a lot of sense to us.”
As an Activator, Downforce is already working with an existing Leading Harvest member on a project to measure outcomes associated with certification. This project will assist in meeting two FMS objectives – soil health and conservation, and energy use, air quality and climate change – through its US-patented methodology for remote assessment of soil organic carbon at scale, anywhere in the world.
“In this project, we will work with multiple Leading Harvest Program Users to provide data to measure how effective their on-farm practices are” Mr Richards said.
“It really comes down to the Farmland Management Standard providing a playbook for system change and behavioural change that needs to take place to transition towards a sustainable and resilient global agriculture system.”
“Standardising the approach required enables collective action.”
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