Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, CropTrak create Stewardship Calculator 2.0

The Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops has announced a partnership with CropTrak to accelerate the adoption of the Stewardship Calculator 2.0 across the specialty food supply chain.

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, according to a news release.

This empowers participants across the supply chain to baseline the environmental impacts of fruit, nut and vegetable production and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

The Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) is a multi-stakeholder initiative with growers, grower groups, brands, buyers and NGOs dedicated to developing tools for measuring on-farm sustainability performance across the specialty crop supply chain.

“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,” Alison Edwards, director of the SISC, said in the release. “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.”

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

“Sustainability metrics are a critical part of the overall food story,” Aaron Hutchinson, president of CropTrak, said in the release. “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.”

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, according to the release.

“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,” Edwards said in the release.