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This article discusses the classification in scope 1, 2, 3 emissions and how, combined with their quantification, it can help increase efficiency, reduce pollution and obtain value-added products in the agri-food sector – all thanks to digital agriculture.
Agriculture is responsible for about 10% of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions, or 20% if livestock farming is also considered. When discussing greenhouse gases, we generally refer to carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. It is estimated that agriculture emits about 50% of anthropogenic methane, resulting from fermentation in ruminants and flooding of rice fields, and 60% of nitrous oxide. However, emissions can also be classified according to the step in the supply chain where they occur: these are known as scope 1,2,3 emissions.
According to the GreenHouse Gas (GHG) protocol, within a company, all the emissions can be classified into three categories, called scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3.
Scope 1 emissions are those that arise directly from sources controlled or owned by a company, such as a proprietary tractor used to plough a field. Scope 2 emissions are indirect GHG emissions associated with purchasedelectricity, or heating or cooling systems, e.g. cold rooms used to store fresh food. Finally, scope 3 emissions are the result of activities that are not owned or controlled by a company but are nevertheless related to the generation and transportation of the a company's products, for example, such as emissions related to the production of agricultural machinery, fertilizers, and pesticides that farmers use on crops. These emissions may be downstream or upstream of a farm.
According to this scheme, it goes without saying that the scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions of one company are the scope 3 emissions of another company. So, in the case of the agri-food sector, the scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions generated by a farm to obtain the raw materials that agri-food companies process will be the scope 3 emissions of agrifood companies.
According to the 2021 ESG Report issued by the Kraft Heinz Company, scope 3 emissions accounted for more than 90% of their total emissions. Consumer awareness of environmental issues is increasing nowadays. Therefore, there is growing interest among food companies in obtaining data on the emissions related to the raw materials they use. For farms, being able to provide this information can give their products added value within the supply chain. Moreover, this allows farmers themselves to better quantify the emissions related to their activities, so as to understand how to limit them. By doing so, it is possible to increase farm efficiency, reduce pollution, and cut costs.
But how can all this data be collected, simply and effectively? The answer is through digital agriculture: the xFarm app makes it possible to keep track of all the activitiescarried out on the farm, automatically recording all agricultural operations, with the corresponding diesel consumption, as well as the quantities of fertilizers and pesticides used. This provides an extremely accurate and timely database from which all the information needed to calculate the emissions associated with the cultivation of the various products can be easily extracted. This data can be used directly by the farmer, or passed on to agribusinesses.
All this information is called farm level insights . They make it possible to calculate the emissions associated with the production of an agri-food product in a very timely manner, for example through Life Cycle Assessment analyses. It used to be that these estimates were based on a collection of farm notebook data from a small sample of farms that were part of a supply chain, thus operating with a large margin of error. Today, however, farm management information systems (FMIS) as xFarm allow them to do much more. Farms that use these tools to record all activities come to have an automatically compiled farm notebook. The highly accurate data collected will allow the footprint of agrifood products to be estimated more and more accurately. Specifically, through the platform xFarm Analytics, agrifood companies can consult in real time the aggregated data from the farms contributing to the supply chain, or from sensors, so they have an overview of the entire production process. With the Sustainability module, finally, they can calculate the specific environmental impact of all activities and the global impact of the supply chain.
Quantifying emissions is the first step to reducing them. If we really want to halve our emissions by 2030, as indicated by Agenda 2030, we need to understand where we can act most effectively. Only by digitizizing of the agrifood supply chain can we obtain objective data that will allow us to understand where and how to intervene, with an eye to increasing sustainability, but also the efficiency of farms, avoiding waste of inputs and therefore also of time and money.
Once it is clear where to act,precision agriculture can make a big contribution to optimizing the use of resources, thereby enhancing farms environmental and economic sustainability. In this respect, xFarm provides its users with a range of useful services for introducing various precision farming practices on farms. These range from vigour maps with vegetation indices, to forecasting models that monitor insects and phytopathologies, to decision support systems that help decide how and when to intervene, fe.g. with irrigation.
Sources:
IPCC: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/
GHG protocol: https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/standards/ghg-protocol-revised.pdf
Kraft-Heinz ESG Report 2021: https://www.kraftheinzcompany.com/esg/pdf/KraftHeinz-2022-ESG-Report.pdf
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