
Sophie von Lilienfeld-Toal
Founder and managing partner
“My heart beats for people who take unconventional, courageous, even revolutionary paths and contribute to a life fit for grandchildren through their actions.”
Every company, every institution and every private household is run by people. People who make decisions every day that have consequences. My heart beats for people who take unconventional, courageous, even revolutionary paths and make a contribution to a life fit for grandchildren.
In 1994, during my voluntary social year in a rural community in Canada, I developed my love of farming and discovered the beneficial and fulfilling effect of working in and with nature. Convinced that people need to relearn how to deal with natural resources, I trained as a farmer and then went on to study ecological agricultural sciences. I was always concerned with the question of how the interfaces between people, nature and the economy could be shaped. I didn’t find any real answers to this question during my studies. I now know that they didn’t exist there.
My work at a certification body for organic food showed me that the “standardization and documentation” of the organic movement was a sensible conclusion in order to secure the position of real organic farmers on the market and thus also this form of land management. However, many aspects were not taken into account or were lost in this process; they can now be found again in the discourses on sustainability.
When the desire to develop a sustainability standard was brought to me in 2011, I saw it as an opportunity to combine many aspects of the original movement with a safeguard on the market – and perhaps also to find answers to my initial question.
For me, the founding of GfaW in 2012, the development of the CSE criteria and other product certifications that are lacking on the organic market are a consistent, independent way of shaping the interface between people, nature and the economy.