The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) and the Cool Farm Alliance (CFA) — a nonprofit industry platform and creator of the Cool Farm Tool sustainable agriculture calculator — have signed a memorandum of understanding to improve alignment and reporting of farm-level metrics data. Through the partnership, TSC aims to make the process of reporting on farm-level metrics easier for farmers and food manufacturers.
Under the agreement, TSC and CFA will have mutual membership to each other’s organization and will work on expanding awareness of CFA’s Cool Farm Tool, a free, online tool that enables farmers to quantify and understand farm-related environmental impacts on water, biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions.
The partnership will strengthen ties between farmers in more than 60 countries around the world and TSC members — which include Campbell, Kellogg’s, P&G, PepsiCo, and Unilever —and open up access to farming performance indicators and retailer sustainability surveys. The information aims to help facilitate climate change mitigation throughout agricultural supply chains.
“The Cool Farm Tool is becoming increasingly widely used in supply chains around the world and we are eager for its uptake by farmers to support complementary sustainability programs like TSC. We look forward to a long and fruitful working partnership,” said Daniella Malin, Deputy General Manager for CFA.
The move is the latest of a slew of recent initiatives geared at improving supply chain transparency. UK supermarket giant Tesco recently engaged its suppliers to publish food waste data and commit to halving food waste by 2030, while Asda and the Co-op teamed up with sustainable business and supply chain platform 2degrees to enable mutual suppliers to submit aggregated data on waste, water and energy to both retailers at the same time. Earlier this year, Unilever suspended sourcing from an Indonesian palm oil supplier over a breach of policy on deforestation and peatland clearance.
“TSC has been working with CFA for several years now and we are excited to formalize this partnership agreement. By working together, we can streamline the reporting experience for growers and food manufacturers, making it easier to communicate sustainability data,” said Dr. Christy Slay, Director of Research for TSC.
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Published Oct 6, 2017 7am EDT / 4am PDT / 12pm BST / 1pm CEST