Handsome Brook Farms

Tracy Favre is SVP of Sustainability and Organic Strategies at Handsome Brook Farms. Her experience spans environmental engineering, sustainable land management, organic inspection and certification, consulting and sustainability reporting.

Making Sustainability Work through Better Systems

I began my career as an environmental engineer working in watershed management. After relocating to Germany, I pursued a master’s degree in sustainable development, emphasizing agriculture. The program introduced me to systems-based problem-solving, shaping my understanding of sustainability as a way to address interconnected challenges.

After returning to the United States, I joined Holistic Management International, a nonprofit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, working with farmers and ranchers on sustainable land management. Over four years, I helped build consulting services for private landowners before becoming chief operating officer, responsible for programs, consulting contracts and the consulting department’s profit and loss.

One client, Horizon Organic, encouraged me to consider a position on the National Organic Standards Board, a federal advisory board to the Secretary of Agriculture on the USDA National Organic Program. I served for five years as a natural resource management stakeholder representative, deepening my involvement in organic standards and programs in the United States and worldwide.

From Organic Compliance to Sustainability Strategy

During my final year on the board, I was recruited as global director at Quality Assurance International, then described as the country’s largest organic certifier of processed food products. I led a team of around 58 staff members responsible for certifying products to USDA National Organic Program standards. I later combined my experience as an inspector, certifier and consultant in independent consulting focused primarily on organic compliance.

I eventually joined Handsome Brook Farms, an organic pasture-raised egg company working with 300-plussmall family farms across 14 states. Initially, I helped manage the impact of birds on pastureland and served as program manager for two USDA grants.

In July of this year, my role expanded from VP of Sustainability to SVP of Sustainability and Organic Strategies. Pasture work moved under operations, while I retained responsibility for sustainability reporting for major corporate clients, including Sam’s Club, Walmart and Costco. My broader responsibilities include marketing and assessing where the organization should grow over the next 10 to 15 years, including supply-chain integration and new markets.

Build the tools, build the system, build the process that allows you to do your job better and also keep your skills sharp and stay current with the way things are changing.

One project grew out of the USDA Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities grant, which required detailed reporting. Drawing on my environmental engineering experience managing large datasets, I led the development of a relational database to organize grant information and support our cost-share program, through which the company invests in network farms, primarily in pasture improvement.

When the grant concluded in April of 2025, the database continued to allow us to organize and analyze information on farm impacts, pasture improvement projects from all funding sources. We could then examine our investments and begin modeling their impact on the land.

Connecting Data to Decisions

The database also supports corporate sustainability reporting. Our insetting work includes carbon sequestration, water-cycle improvements and soil-health building through grant-funded activities and our internal cost-share program. We calculate emissions through financial transactions using CarbonSuite, a plug-in for our NetSuite enterprise resource planning system. The database connects these sources for reporting.

Better data also informs strategic decisions. As part of my new role I have been evaluating where we can gain efficiencies in our supply chain including evaluating where we can increase feed supply resiliency. As the company grows aggressively, reducing supply-chain risk is important. Feed is a significant operating expense, so the evaluation considers geopolitical problems, climate change, market access, cost control and greenhouse gas footprints.

When I joined the company almost four years ago, reporting was highly labor intensive. Some tasks will always require research and information gathering, but our systems have made reporting more accurate, robust and efficient. The database and CarbonSuite, used with NetSuite, help us produce reports more quickly and accurately.

My advice is to keep learning and sharpening your skills as AI and other tools change how we work. Organizations also need internal systems that manage data and improve reporting. I am a process-oriented person and I would rather build the right tools and processes once than repeatedly face the same challenges.