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New Metrics Help Farmers Take Sustainability Measures
Green Technology Featured Articles
September 24, 2013

New Metrics Help Farmers Take Sustainability Measures

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

Many of the essential foods in our diet—fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs—are cultivated in the rich and nourishing soil of America’s Heartland. However, today, many U.S. agricultural enterprises are finding themselves in need of critical care. The drought and flood conditions that have resulted from global warming are stripping  fields of the nitrogen, phosphorous, organic matter, and water they need to continue yielding Grade A produce—and the results are of great concern to the entire specialty crops supply chain.


In response, a Soquel, Calif.-based industry group has, literally, begun a grassroots effort to sustain U.S. farmlands and the specialty crops that they harvest. The Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) is a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to developing tools for measuring sustainable performance across the specialty crops supply chain.

Five New Working Metrics

This week, the group of farmers, food companies and others that comprise SISC—among them, American Farmland Trust, Campbell Soup, Farm Fresh Direct, Del Monte Foods, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, Walmart, the United Fresh Produce Association and Western Growers—announced the release of five working metrics.

Developed through unprecedented collaboration among growers, buyers and public interest groups, the metrics are intended to provide a science-based yardstick for assessing on-farm performance across key areas impacted by the production of fruits, vegetables and nuts.

“SISC lets growers measure stewardship for fertilizer, energy, soil and water without turning the farm into a full-blown academic research laboratory,” said founding member Jonathan Kaplan, director, Food and Agriculture Program, Natural Resources Defense Council. “This group worked hard to maintain scientific integrity while ensuring that the metrics are practical for growers.”

The initial suite of metrics—designated as “working” metrics because they will continually be refined, based on evolving knowledge—are: Applied Water Use Efficiency, Energy Use, Nitrogen Use, Phosphorus Use and Soil Organic Matter. Metric overviews, as well as detailed technical notes, guidelines and a demonstration metric calculator, are available at the group’s website.

Significant Benefits

Quantitative performance metrics, developed collaboratively, offer significant potential benefits, including:

  • Providing a standardized system for measuring and reporting performance, thus reducing the potential for duplicative systems; 
  • Allowing individual operators to engage in the sustainability journey starting at (and regardless of) their current level of performance; 
  • Addressing the unique needs of the specialty crop industry while demonstrably improving environmental and social impacts; 
  • Helping operators identify opportunities for increasing efficiency and reducing costs; Enabling verifiable marketing claims (i.e., backed by measurable performance data); and
  • Reducing the likelihood of future industry regulation by solving problems and demonstrating improved performance to regulators.

“If you are considering metrics for assessing on-farm practices, we hope you will adopt SISC metrics,” said Hank Giclas, senior vice president of Western Growers and founding member of SISC. “They were developed with many stakeholders around the table, have been peer-reviewed by independent experts and are intended to help individual producers identify opportunities for both practice improvements and economic savings.”

A Common Language

 “In addition to helping growers target areas for improvement, the metrics will enable them to compare their farms to those of similar growers over time,” noted Steve Balling, director of Agricultural & Analytical Services, Del Monte, and SISC Steering Committee member. “Just as important, they provide us all with a common language for communicating with customers and consumers about the impact of our production methods—and for clearly demonstrating the stewardship activities of U.S. farmers.”

The group is careful to say that it has not duplicated the work being done by the Field to Market Project (formerly called the Keystone Initiative), noting on its website, “The Field to Market (F2M) project shares SISC’s focus on performance-based metrics, but it is analyzing existing datasets to estimate sustainable performance of specific agricultural sectors and regions. Also, F2M is currently focused on "commodity crops" (corn, soy, alfalfa, wheat, etc.) while SISC is focused on specialty crops (fruits, vegetables and nuts). Several SISC participants are also participating in F2M and we have shared knowledge with that effort.”

After receiving significant support from the Conservation Innovation Grant program administered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, SISC is now self-funded by coalition members and operating as a project of Ag Innovations Network.




Edited by Alisen Downey


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