Doug Cole is a sustainability proponent. Last summer, his greenhouse operation, D.S. Cole Growers in Loudon, N.H., was the first in the United States to earn the MPS-ABC environmental certificate, and Cole is currently striving to improve his operation’s sustainable rating in MPS’s A-B-C system.
Cole even serves on the Environmental Sustainability Criteria Development subcommittee working toward establishing a National Sustainable Agriculture Standard. The subcommittee is tasked with developing six environmental principles, the first of which was recently developed after months of debate. It focuses on air pollution and water and soil degradation.
When the subcommittee establishes all six principles, metrics will be developed to determine exactly what’s sustainable and what isn’t. But at the committee’s current pace, Cole believes a National Sustainable Agriculture Standard is years away. And the more he participates in subcommittee conference calls and online discussion threads, the more he wonders why greenhouse growers would want the National Sustainable Agriculture Standard developed.
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