Metrics In Development
Three metrics are currently in progress:
- Greenhouse Gas
- Food Loss/Waste
Highlights are below; for additional information, please login at left.
Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
The GHG Metric addresses the GHG emissions associated with five components:
- fuel use;
- electricity use;
- fertilizer production;
- N2O emissions; and,
- 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
Food Loss/Waste
The Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) is proposing a food loss metric for growers to track and report the amount of food grown to maturity, but not used; in other words: crops that were “ready for harvest” butdid not enter the supply chain for human consumption.
The purpose of this metric is to understand how much of a crop’s final production is not sold, and why. Understanding this amount of food ‘lost’ will provide growers and associated buyers, with useful data of where and why loss is occurring within a farm operation.
At this time, this metric only captures physical losses, and not economic losses. A grower can easily take their loss numbers and calculate economic losses using those food loss numbers.
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:
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Farm
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Processing
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Distribution
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Retail / Food Service
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PEOPLE
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Human resources (worker health & safety, employment practices, etc.)
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X
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X
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X
|
X
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Community (local sourcing / hiring, etc.)
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X
|
X
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X
|
X
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PLANET
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|
Air quality
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X
|
X
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X
|
X
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Biodiversity and ecosystems
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X
|
|
|
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Energy use
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
X
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GHG emissions
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
Nutrients1
|
X
|
|
|
|
Packaging
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
X
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Pesticides 1, 2
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
X
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Soils
|
X
|
|
|
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Waste
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X
|
X
|
X
|
X
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Water quality 3
|
X
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X
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X
|
X
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Water use
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X
|
X
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X
|
X
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PROFIT 4
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Green procurement
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X
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X
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X
|
X
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Fair price/incentives
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X
|
X
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X
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X
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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
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