The Keystone Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture

1. The Keystone Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture

2. What is Field to Market? • A collaborative stakeholder group • Producers, agribusinesses, food and retail companies, conservation associations, universities, and NRCS • Identifying supply chain strategies to define, measure, and promote continuous improvement for agriculture • Addressing the challenge of increasing demand and limited resources • Developing and piloting outcomes-based, science-based metrics and tools • Fieldprint Calculator, a free, online tool to help growers analyze their operations and help the supply chain explain how food is produced • National Report on environmental and socioeconomic trends over time for U.S. commodity crops

3. Field to Market Membership

4. How We Define Sustainable Agriculture • Meeting the needs of the present while improving the ability of future generations to meet their own needs • Increasing productivity to meet future food and fiber demands • Improving the environment • Improving human health • Improving the social and economic well-being of agricultural communities

5. Big Ideas • Engage the full supply chain • Include producers • Focus on commodities crops • Unique supply chains and traceability issues • Develop science- and outcomes-based measures • Identify the key indicators for sustainability • Measure broad-scale trends and field-scale outcomes • Scale and implement metrics for sustainability programs

6. Deliverables: What We Are Doing Public data and models Collaboratively developed Outcomes based

7. The Fieldprint Calculator: Measuring Field Level Outcomes and Identifying Opportunities for Improvement 7

8. What is the Fieldprint Calculator? • An online education tool for row crop farmers that indexes their agronomics and practices to a fieldprint • Helps growers evaluate their farming decisions and compare their sustainability performance • In the areas of: • Land use • Soil conservation • Soil carbon • Water use • Energy use • Greenhouse gas emissions • Water Quality and Biodiversity in development • Against: • Their own fields • Their own performance over time • County, state and national averages

9. Fieldprint Calculator Start Page 9

10. Fieldprint Calculator Summary Page 10

11. Field to Market Calculator Pilot Projects • Demonstrate use of calculator on the ground to test utility at the grower level and through the supply chain • Currently 6 member-led pilots engaging farmers across geographies, crops, and supply chains • Over approximately 300 farmers engaged

12. Pilot Feedback “I’ll tell you, I wish I had this tool when I first started my position here at the District.  It’s a great way to get to know growers and local operations and to get a conversation started.  I’m making more in-roads with the fieldprinting project, than I have with much of the previous outreach I’ve done.  If it’s used as nothing more than an outreach tool, it’s a winner.” – Jared Foster, Van Buren Conservation District/Paw-Paw pilot

13. National Indicators Report:The Sustainability Story of U.S. Agriculture

14. Report Objectives • Analyze trends over time for environmental and socioeconomic sustainability indicators • Establish a baseline against which to measure future improvements • Create enabling conditions for an informed, multi-stakeholder discussion of sustainability • Advance an outcomes-based, science-based approach • Provide broad-scale context for more local efforts

15. National Indicators Report

16. 2012 Indicators Report

17. Summary Results: Environmental Indicators • Resource use/impact per unit of production (“efficiency”) • Improvement for all six crops on all five environmental indicators • Driven in part by improvements in yield • Helps track resource uses vs. production/demand concerns • Total resource use/impact • Variability across crops and indicators (increases, decreases) • Driven in part by overall increases or decreases in production

18. Summary Results: Socioeconomic Indicators • Improvements (decreases) in debt to asset ratio, fatalities, and non-fatality injuries • Decreases in labor hours per unit production • Increase in agriculture’s contribution to national GDP • Fluctuation in returns over variable costs, with increases (improvements) in recent years

19. Sample Results:Resources per bushel, Soybeans

20. A Closer LookSoybean Results: Soil Erosion TOTAL PER ACRE PER BUSHEL • Total soil erosion decreased over most of the study period, but has increased more recently (similar for corn) • Per acre soil erosion decreased during first half of study period, then leveled off (similar for corn, cotton, and wheat)

21. IN SUMMARYU.S. Producers Have a Great Story to Tell… • Efficiency gains over time, along with increased production • Improvements on a number of economic and social indicators …As well as opportunities for continued improvement • Continued challenges ahead for meeting increased demand within limits of natural resources and social and economic needs • With the collaboration of U.S. farmers, tools and metrics are emerging to help track and communicate progress and identify opportunities for continued improvement

22. For More Information • www.fieldtomarket.org • National Report, Calculator, and more! • Fred Luckey, Chairman • (314) 409-7822;fred.luckey@fieldtomarket.org • Julie Shapiro, Facilitator • (970) 513-5830; jshapiro@keystone.org 22