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:

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

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:

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