Stewardship Calculator 2.0 measures supply chain sustainability

The Stewardship Calculator 2.0 can be used to track on-farm water, energy/greenhouse gas, fertilizer use efficiency, and soil organic matter, as well as biodiversity, food waste, and irrigation efficiency. These metrics help to inform sustainability reporting as well as improve production plans and supply chain management practices.

The partnership between Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) and CropTrak, a cloud technology company digitally connecting global food companies’ supply processes to ensure efficiency and transparency, accelerates adoption of the Stewardship Calculator 2.0 across the food supply chain.

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The partnership leverages CropTrak’s technology and on-the-ground expertise with growers to deepen the level of insight and improve user experience of the tool. This empowers participants across the supply chain to baseline the environmental impacts of fruit, nut, and vegetable production and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

SISC is a multistakeholder initiative with growers, grower groups, brands, buyers, and NGOs dedicated to developing tools for measuring on-farm sustainability performance. 

“As the industry responds to climate change and shifting consumer demand, our partners asked for a credible, easy-to-use data solution to track stewardship practices from farm to fork,” says Alison Edwards, SISC director. “Thanks to CropTrak’s generous partnership, we had the opportunity to leverage their industry leading platform and deep supply chain data insights to update key metrics and implement more efficient workflows to help accelerate adoption by growers and their supply chain partners.” 

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“Sustainability metrics are a critical part of the overall food story. CropTrak helps global food companies solve complex supply challenges through data collection and analytics every day. CropTrak’s team of engineers and data scientists are proud to support SISC and create a tool that can be used to deepen the trust and communications between growers, companies, and consumers,” says Aaron Hutchinson, president of CropTrak.

Based on input from growers, environmental NGOs, and buyers, SISC metrics exist to provide a single third-party validator to sustainability metrics that can be communicated transparently among peer groups and supply chain partners. Edwards adds, “This tool demonstrates steps we are taking to ensure we meet our commitment to advance environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the specialty crop supply chain.”

CropTrak’s food cloud technology helps multinational food & beverage companies, suppliers, and growers increase the efficiency and transparency of their supply chain management processes and systems.