Want Farm-Level Data? Answer These Three Questions First, Experts Say

by Kristin Leigh Lore (Trust in Food) Understanding farmers’ perspectives, motivations and values can help accelerate the data sharing needed to quantify and scale climate-smart agriculture in the U.S. -- As more points in the value chain seek production data, it’s still unclear to producers what information is needed, who benefits and who is willing to share the cost of collecting and reporting. Providing greater clarity to these questions and helping producers align data sharing with broader values and motivations is critical to reach scale and allow more producers to benefit from opportunities in the climate-smart economy.

A panel of experts at this year’s Trust In Food Symposium used the recently released “Understanding Farmer Perspectives on Data” report as the backdrop to discuss how downstream buyers can support farmers and how to help more production data move through the value chain.

While the momentum behind tracking greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chain has been building steadily for about three to five years, it’s recently gained traction, said Bayer’s Josh VanDeWalle, panelist and Midwest Row Crop Collaborative member.

“A lot of CPG companies, grocery retailers, multinationals, such as Bayer, have made significant commitments in the sustainability space,” VanDeWalle said. “There’s a lot of noise out there, [but] what that does is, actually, create a lot of opportunity.”

But opportunity doesn’t equal clarity, and farmers are unsure about how different programs compare, from carbon to climate-smart, and how they can evaluate the criteria and opportunities in each.

“They’re being asked for more information all the time. And they’re not sure if the value is there for sharing that information. Should they share that information? What information should they collect? And what does this even look like in their operations?” said VanDeWalle.

Though a simple notion, accurately quantifying sustainability metrics across a fast moving, complex food value chain takes the buy-in and participation of a diverse team of supply chain partners. Each of which plays a part in producing, packaging and transporting a food commodity from seed to shelf.

At The Sustainability Consortium, CEO Christy Melhart Slay and her team collaborate with retailers, consumer packaged goods companies, NGOs, academia and other stakeholders across the food value chain to share insight and research into how farmers think about collecting sustainability data.

In a recent report produced in collaboration with Trust In Food, “Understanding Farmer Perspectives on Data”, hog farmers and row crop producers shared their perspectives on tracking and reporting data. The research sheds light on the barriers and opportunities to encourage on-farm data sharing and ways to meet the needs of producers.

Excerpt from AgWeb: There is confusion in the carbon credits market around standards for measuring, monitoring, reporting and verifying data. What is a big step that, you believe, can be taken to provide clarity across the value chain for this issue?
The measuring process is fairly straightforward. Independent entities such as the American Carbon Registry and universities have confirmed that if a farmer does X practice, Y tons of carbon will be sequestered, or better, not released into the atmosphere.

The real challenges are with reporting, monitoring, and verifying. Today, essentially all reporting activity requires manual entry along with confidence in the reporter’s integrity and accuracy. I don’t believe there’s a community on earth with higher overall integrity than American farmers, but we’ve all heard about a few bad actors. Even farmers with the very best intentions can make honest reporting errors.

This is why monitoring is an essential element of carbon markets. Businesses that purchase farmer-produced carbon credits demand monitoring because they need to be confident those credits won’t or can’t be reversed in the future. But monitoring, whose only purpose is to identify reporting errors, is expensive because it’s human based, manual, and time consuming. It takes the lion’s share of the value of ag-based carbon credits. Consequently, monitoring all the qualifying farm practices that can generate ag-based carbon credit is just not financially feasible, yet without universal monitoring, verification is impossible. It’s a real Catch-22.

Ultimus helps address this dilemma for credit-eligible practices – such as reducing the application rate of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, or applying nitrogen-fixing supplements or soil health products – by completely automating the verification process. READ MORE