Rabobank North America Leadership Awards
Rabobank North America annually recognizes organizations that demonstrate remarkable industry stewardship, sustainability, and innovation within the Food and Agriculture (F&A) industry. There are three awards, one overarching Excellence in Food and Ag Leadership award for an exceptional company making large-scale impact in F&A, as well as awards for an Emerging Leadership in Innovation and Leadership in Sustainability. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, this year we will be factoring companies’ responses and resilience in the face of the crisis. In addition, the awards have an enhanced set of social responsibility criteria focused on employee and community efforts as well as proactivity towards fostering racial equity.
Award Categories
Excellence in Food and Ag Leadership
Rabobank’s overarching Award for Excellence in Food & Ag Leadership recognizes a large-scale market leader in North America that has demonstrated great and lasting impact in its sector. The winner will have:
- Achieved significant success as a leader in building, rejuvenating or expanding a business in food, beverages, or agribusiness supply chain;
- Demonstrated great agility in response to COVID, with respect to production capacity, products and solutions, or contributions to pandemic mitigation and positive societal impact;
- Taken responsibility for the wellbeing of its employees, customers, and local communities and demonstrated environmental stewardship, model corporate citizenship, and a track record of meeting social commitments;
- Been recognized as setting standards of excellence within the industry;
- Demonstrated diversity in composition of its governance body
Leadership in Sustainability
The Rabobank Award for Leadership in Sustainability recognizes a high-impact organization that has achieved unique steps towards business, environmental, social and governance sustainability. The winner will have:
- Developed programs and/or initiatives aimed at improving business, environmental, social and governance sustainability;
- Demonstrated alignment between sustainability strategy and core business priorities with defined and transparent sustainability guidelines and commitments;
- Maintained or increased sustainability standards and enacted exemplary social or charitable initiatives in response to the Covid 19 crisis and social justice-related causes;
- Been a model corporate citizen and recognized as setting standards of excellence within the industry
- Demonstrated diversity in composition of its governance body
- Demonstrated strong financial performance
Emerging Leadership in Innovation
The Rabobank Award for Emerging Leadership in Innovation recognizes a fast-growing young company that addresses issues in the food and agribusiness space in a new and innovative way. The winner will have:
- Operated in the industry for 10 years or less;
- Demonstrated a distinct innovation in the food and agriculture supply chain and/or offered a significant new choice, value, and/or convenience to customers;
- Made a positive contribution to COVID mitigation efforts via pivoting offerings and/or contributing to communities towards COVID relief efforts;
- Been a model corporate citizen and demonstrated commitments to diversity and inclusion initiatives
- Demonstrated strong financial performance/investor interest and potential for market expansion
2018 Leadership Award Winners
Leadership & Excellence:
McCormick & Company
Leader in Sustainability:
Clif Bar & Company
Emerging Leader in Innovation:
Apeel Sciences
