Three metrics are currently in progress:

• Greenhouse Gas
• Simple Irrigation Effiiciency

Highlights are below; for additional information, please login at left.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG)

The GHG Metric addresses the GHG emissions associated with five components:

1. fuel use;
2. electricity use;
3. fertilizer production;
4. N2O emissions; and,
5. soil C storage.

The metric was challenged by which tool to use to account for the N2O and soil C components. Ultimately, the Cool Farm Tool was proposed for both N2O and soil C. Of the concerns raised in the technical review, many were addressed in a response by the developers of the Cool Farm Tool. At this point, completing the metric requires a decision about whether to proceed with the Cool Farm Tool and other details surrounding that decision.

Draft Metric

Tons CO2e / Tons harvested

Simple Irrigation Efficiency

The Simple Irrigation Efficiency (SIE) metric measures how efficiently irrigation water is used to meet a crop's water demand. A grower can improve the SIE metric score by reducing losses of water to pathways that don’t contribute to crop growth, including soil evaporation, percolation and run-off.  As such, the SIE metric is an indicator of how productively the water resource is being used. 

Draft Metric

Volume of applied irrigation water / ETc  (volume of water used through crop evaporation and transpiration) 

SISC Vision

SISC's founding vision was ambitious: to develop a system for measuring performance throughout the specialty crops supply chain—from farm to plate. Based on the direction of current participants, the first five Working Metrics focus more narrowly on on-farm resource use. Still, SISC leadership remains committed to developing metrics that address performance across the supply chain, and/or to join other metrics-driven initiatives seeking to do so.

This chart summarizes SISC's original vision:

1. includes related water quality issues
2. includes health and safety of workers and communities
3. includes stormwater runoff and process water
4. improved efficiency/cost reduction will be incorporated into other metrics where appropriate