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Sustainability: A Farm Manager’s Perspective

Sustainability: A Farm Manager’s Perspective. Paul D. Mitchell AAE 320: Farming Systems Management. Learning Goals. To develop a basic understanding of company efforts and consumer comprehension of ag and food sustainability How sustainability is typically defined

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Sustainability: A Farm Manager’s Perspective

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  1. Sustainability:A Farm Manager’s Perspective Paul D. Mitchell AAE 320: Farming Systems Management

  2. Learning Goals • To develop a basic understanding of company efforts and consumer comprehension of agand food sustainability • How sustainability is typically defined • Terminology and concepts • What farm mangers can expect • Cool Farm Tool, FieldprintCalculator • UW/WISA Sustainability Self-Assessments and Frontiers of Sustainability

  3. Corporate Agricultural Sustainability • Agriculture and Food are part of the corporate push for sustainability • Most major food companies have announced sustainability programs • McDonald’s, Cargill, Unilever, WalMart, FritoLay, Sysco, Del Monte, Kettle Chips, etc.

  4. Corporate Agricultural Sustainability in WI • Focus on energy and waste reduction • FritoLay’s Beloit Plant • 1st food manufacturing plant to achieve LEED gold • Reduced natural gas 35%, electricity 20% and water 50% per pound of product since 2000 • Kettle Chips Beloit Plant (LEED gold plant) • 100% waste oil for biodiesel: saves 8 tons CO2 emissions/year • Reduces gas and electricity by 20%, uses wind power • Reuses 3.4 million gallons of water per year • Removing paper layer in bag reduced material use 20% Courtesy of J. Colquhuon, UW-Horticulture

  5. Commodity Groups • Most major commodity groups have sustainability programs • Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy • National Corn Growers Association • United Soybean Board • National Potato Council • Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association

  6. Sustainability and WI Farms • Russet Potato Exchange/Wysocki Farms • Responsible Farming: list of “Earth Actions” • Windmill on logo to sell potatoes • Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese • Sustainable Story: Anaerobic manure digester, text story, news video, press release • “From cow pies to clear skies”

  7. Main Point • Sustainability is a big deal and becoming more so! • Ag Sustainability used to be “Alternative Ag” • More mainstream now and becoming even more so • It is now and will continue to impact farm operations • Look at how sustainability is defined and its drivers • What can farm mangers can expect?

  8. Agricultural Sustainability • Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals – environmental health, economic profitability, and social equity – to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. • Stewardship of both natural and human resources • Systems-based, interdisciplinary research and education • Responsibility of all participants in the system • More of a process or strategy than an accomplishment • Tied to personal values—which leads to conflicts

  9. People, Profits and Planet Triple Bottom Line

  10. Practical Issues • “People, Profits and Planet” is a grand ideal, but issues remain to make it practical • What do you measure and how? • Commonly see Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as way to measure and summarize multiple environmental impacts • Certification, Standards, Assessments • How do you implement or operationalize sustainability? • Do you use Practice-based Standards or Outcome-based Requirements?

  11. Life Cycle Analysis/Assessment (LCA) • Framework to estimate environmental effects of products for sustainability assessment and measure progress—Have you improved? • Examine inputs and activities used to produce the product, then quantify impacts • Examine the outputs created by making, using and disposing of the product, then quantify impacts • Commonly focus on energy consumption, water use and waste generated, but can do more outputs (e.g., GHG/nitrous oxides) • Never much on Economics/Profit and Society/Community

  12. General LCA Graphic Source: http://www.ched-ccce.org/confchem/2010/Spring2010/P3-Haack_et_al.html

  13. Agricultural LCAs • Ag Production (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702969f) • 83% of average U.S. household carbon footprint per year for food consumption is ag production • Food production & distribution = 17% of U.S. energy use • Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food • UW “Green Cheese” Project: Cheese LCA http://fyi.uwex.edu/greencheese/ • Potato and vegetable LCAs for processed vegetables from WI • Many more need to be completed

  14. Green Cheese LCA Graphic Source: http://fyi.uwex.edu/greencheese/files/2011/04/10_Passos-Fonseca_GreenCheeseLCA-EnergyGHGIntegratedDairyBiofuelsWisconsin_ASABE.pdf

  15. Implementation • How do you implement sustainability? • What changes do you make? • How do you measure success? • Do you get credit for your efforts? • Why bother? • Personal values matter • “De gustibus no est disputandem” • Focus here on how affects farm management

  16. Operationalizing Sustainability • Companies pushing suppliers for sustainable products so company can make claims to consumers to aid marketing • Different companies have different methods and ways to ensure sustainability • Currently a “free for all” with little structure to systems in place, but lots of demands • Farmers at ground zero in the middle of debate • To sell in certain markets, need to be “certified”

  17. Sustainability Certification • Create standards and certification system • Way to “prove” sustainability for marketing • Fair Trade, Organic, Healthy Grown • Companies currently have individual systems • Comparable to GAP/GHP a few years ago • Unified GAP/GHP now, like ISO 9000 • Sustainability standards: no consensus among companies and consumers, multiple systems

  18. Sustainability Certification Examples • Cool Farm Tool • Unilever, plus Pepsico/FritoLay, Sysco, McCain, etc. • GHG (CO2, N20, CH3) emissions (Farm-Level LCA) • Field to Market/Keystone Alliance Fieldprint Calculator for Soybeans/Corn/Wheat/Cotton • Five part radar plot: Land Use, Soil Loss, Water Use, Energy Use, and Climate Impact (Farm-Level LCA) • Healthy Grown Potatoes (Wisconsin) • Primarily Pest Management, plus some Soil & Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration • WISA: Frontiers of Sustainability (Healthy Farms)

  19. Cool Farm Tool: Case Studieshttp://www.coolfarmtool.org/CaseStudies Costco Organic Eggs: GHG Emissions

  20. FieldPrint Calculator ExampleCorn: Summary of Results Per bushel findings: Productivity (yield per acre) increased 41% Land usedecreased 37% Soil lossdecreased 69% Irrigation water use has been variable, with an average 27% decrease Energy use decreased 37% Greenhouse gas emissions decreased 30% http://fieldtomarket.org/files/Field_to_Market_Background_December_2011.pptx

  21. WISA Sustainability Self Assessments • Grower completes survey to report practices • Soybean (USB Project): Survey < 1 hour to complete, currently analyzing data from 382 farms (IL& WI) • Processing Vegetables (USDA-SCRI): Data for snap beans and sweet corn (WI, MN, IL) • Other systems exist • Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops

  22. Soybean Sustainability Tool • Online (coolbean.info) or on paper

  23. Examples

  24. The Sustainability Analysis Problem • Once have data from a Practice-Based Self-Assessment, how do you Aggregate and Integrate over the data to create information? • WISA assessments have many questions: • Soybean has about 70 questions • Snap Bean & Sweet Corn each have about 100 • Whole Farm has about 200 • How do you measure sustainability? • Want to demonstrate improvements over time • Want recommendations for growers to improve • Solution: Frontiers of Sustainability

  25. Frontiers of Sustainability • Key problems analyzing and summarizing results of sustainability assessments • Too many questions and practices • Practices highly correlated with each other • How do we compare or rank growers over the wide range of possible practices? • Principal Components (PC): Reduces number of variables, makes them continuous and removes correlation • Data Envelope Analysis (DEA): Gives single number measuring intensity of grower BMP adoption Principal Components Data Envelope Analysis

  26. Measuring Sustainability • Lots of math to analyze the practice data to score each farmer: 0 to 1 • Measures intensity of best management practice adoption compared to farmer peers

  27. Cranberry Project Illustration • Nov-Dec 2009 mail survey of Wisconsin cranberry growers • Final data for 95 growers, ~80% Wisconsin harvested acres (about 1/3 of global production) • Conducted Non-Negative Sparse Polychoric PCA • Original data: 16 variables (13 discrete)New data: 9 variables (PC1 to PC9) that now continuous, positive, non-correlated

  28. Example Data: Data matrix X • 95 farmers indexed by k = 1 to 95 for the rows • 16 variables indexed by i = 1 to 16 for X1 to X16 for columns • Xik is the observation of variable Xi for farmer k • PCA: finds a matrix of weights to multiply by the data X to create a smaller number of variables with no correlation • Impose non-negativity, plus use polychoric PCA because have discrete data

  29. Cranberry Non-Negative Sparse PCA Weights • Final PCA Output: For each farmer k: PCjk = SjpijXik • PC1k = 1.014*75 + 0*1 + 0.001*14 + 0*324.1 … • Each PCjk is a weighted average of the Xik for each farmer • Converts I variables into J PCs that are continuous, non-negative and have no correlation among them

  30. Each PCj associated with a set of practices Xi • Each PC has larger weights for specific variables that largely determine the value of that PC • Look at weights for each PC to see the largest weights • PC1and PC2: Pest scouting practices • PC3and PC4: Irrigation practices • PC5: Nutrient managements practices

  31. PC4 (irrigation application uniformity testing) vs. PC3 (weather station, soil moisture monitoring)

  32. How do we Measure Sustainability? • Problem still remains: How to integrate across variables? • Data Envelope Analysis (DEA) to measure how intensely each farmer has adopted all sustainable practices relative to the best of his/her peer group • Define a “Frontier of Sustainability” for the PC’s – the best anyone has done, the most intense practice adoption • Distance from the frontier measures how much less sustainable a set of practices is relative to this frontier • Distance from origin gives a numerical measure of sustainability that ranks each farmer relative to peers

  33. Frontiers of Sustainability • Farmer practice adoption gives PC1 and PC2 • Plot these points: Each farmer is a point • DEA Frontier: outer envelope of points • Radial distance from origin to point measures how intensely farmer practice adoption is relative to frontier PC2 Sustainability Frontier Sustainability Metric PC1

  34. Cranberry Data: PC4vs PC3 2-d example(Actually have a 9 dimensional frontier) Score = 0.90 Score = 0.70

  35. Final Output • Score for each farm (0 to 1): practice adoption intensity relative to peer group • Look at the farm population: mean score, min score, score distribution • Repeat survey multiple years, see change in farm scores and farm population over time • Are you doing a better job? • Is the population doing a better job?

  36. Dong, Mitchell, and Colquhoun (2012) Scores for WI Cranberry Growers

  37. IL & WI Soybean Growers

  38. Sustainability Comparisons for Industry 2013 Growers as a group are better • Recollect data and analyze to measure improvement over time by shift in sustainability score distribution and shift in the sustainability frontier • Documents that more growers are adopting more of the sustainable practices 2009 PC2 Best growers are better 2013 2009 PC1

  39. Projects Currently in Progress • Cranberry 2009 Survey: Completed, paper in review: http://www.aae.wisc.edu/pubs/sps/pdf/stpap568.pdf • Weed Resistance Management BMP Adoption by US corn, soybean and cotton farmers • Analysis completed, writing up results for conference • National Soybean Sustainability Initiative (NSSI) • Data collected ~150 WI, ~150 IL, plus more • Analysis in progress: improve algorithm to speed process • Processing Sweet Corn and Green Beans • Collected data, being entered, conference in August

  40. What can farmers expect? • To complete paperwork and maintain records for sustainability certification • Focus on practice adoption: environment, economics and social aspects • Data to support metrics (LCAs), on-farm audits • Find a way to make money while doing so • Agriculture has been through this before • Dairy Sanitation • Pesticides • Food Safety

  41. Implementation • How do you implement sustainability? • What changes do you make? • How do you measure success? • Farmers taking leadership: National Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture (NISA) • http://wisa.cals.wisc.edu/nisa • Much of the drive/push for sustainability from companies/shareholders & consumer groups • Do you get credit for your efforts? • Why bother? Covered

  42. Do Consumers Understand Sustainability?(2010 International Food Information Council) • “How much have you read or heard about the concept of sustainability in food production?” • A Lot 7% • Some 20% • A Little 23% • Nothing At All 50% • In 2007, the “Nothing At All” was 70% Courtesy of J. Colquhuon, UW-Horticulture

  43. Do Consumers Understand Sustainability? (Federal Trade Commission) “In recent years, businesses have increasingly used ‘green’ marketing to capture consumers’ attention and move Americans toward a more environmentally friendly future. But what companies think green claims mean and what consumers really understand are sometimes two different things” (FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz) Updated Green Guides for advertiser product claims (FTC, Oct. 2010) Courtesy of J. Colquhuon, UW-Horticulture

  44. Will Consumers Pay for Sustainability?(2009 Deloitte/GMA survey) 95% of interviewed shoppers said that they would buy green, 22% actually did so. 54% consider sustainability in product selection 2% of shoppers committed to buying green Courtesy of J. Colquhuon, UW-Horticulture

  45. Will consumers pay for sustainability?(2009 Deloitte/GMA survey) “…most shoppers would like green products to be price competitive. They often don’t understand or buy into the rationale that a green product should be more expensive. Shoppers don’t understand why a green product should cost more if it was manufactured with less packaging or it was transported less distance.” Courtesy of J. Colquhuon, UW-Horticulture

  46. Sustainability: Consumers and Farmers • Latent demand for sustainability seems to exist, but companies are struggling to deliver products to meet that demand • Price matters to consumers • Sustainability not a value added characteristic • Sustainability an expectation for farmers • Provide sustainability to get access to markets

  47. Sustainability and Farmers • How can farmers take advantage of these trends/demands for sustainability? • Consider it an Opportunity, not a Threat • Innovation to develop new strategies, new alliances, new practices/technologies • Find a way to use sustainably to make money • How do farmers participate in the creation and implementation of sustainability standards? • Get involved with grower organizations at local, state and national level and with aguniversities • NISA: Grower Led, Science Based

  48. Summary • Overviewed company efforts and consumer surveys regarding ag/food sustainability • How sustainability is typically defined • Terminology and concepts: 3-Spheres, LCAs • What farm mangers can expect • Reviewed examples and initiatives • Cool Farm Tool and Fieldprint Calculator • WISA Sustainability Self-Assessments and Frontiers of Sustainability

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