Collecting data, measuring impact and taking action: the road to change

How often do we turn on the TV, listen to the radio or browse social media and hear about climate change, pollution, air and water quality, and endangered natural resources? These issues have become urgent for our society because of an often superficial and unconscious approach to the environment. For too long, we have used resources without considering their finiteness and the impact of our actions.

To reduce the impact of the agricultural sector...

Agriculture is one of the industries with a significant environmental impact. Around 10-15% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are produced by the agricultural sector. But agriculture's impact is not limited to CO₂ emissions: it also includes water consumption for irrigation and the dispersion of pollutants from the use of fertilisers and pesticides, for example.

In order to reduce the ecological footprint of the agricultural sector, it is crucial to identify the most critical steps and the most impactful activities, so that alternative and more environmentally friendly solutions can be considered. To this end, it is useful to move from a global to a local scale of assessment, analysing individual farms and guiding them towards sustainability approaches. In this sense, there are several European directives that aim to increase the transparency of production chains. One example is the recent EU Corporate Sustainability Directive (CSRD), which requires larger companies to provide information on their level of sustainability.  

...we first need to assess it accurately

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To meet these growing demands, it is essential that each farm in the agri-food sector measures its impacts in order to contribute accurate and timely data to national and international assessments and to implement improvement measures at different levels.

The international methodology for measuring the environmental impacts of production chains, including agri-food chains, is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Itassesses the environmental impacts of the different stages of the production chain, from seed to harvest, including all inputs: seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation water.

Depending on the supply chain, a number of environmental indicators are selected that are particularly relevant in agriculture:

1. Carbon footprint: measures the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted directly and indirectly by the agricultural product, expressed in tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e). It includes direct emissions (e.g. fuel combustion) and indirect emissions (e.g. fertiliser production).

2. Water consumption: measures the total volume of water used for agricultural production, minus the water returned to the environment, expressed in cubic metres (m³). It is an indicator of the efficiency of water use.

3. Acidification: refers to the emission of gases such as sulphur oxides (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), which form acids in the atmosphere and then fall to the ground as acid rain. It is expressed in kg SO₂ equivalent (SO₂e).

4. Eutrophication: measures the process by which nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates accumulate in water bodies, leading to excessive growth of algae and aquatic plants, reducing water quality and biodiversity. It is expressed in kg PO₄ equivalent (PO₄e).

Life cycle analysis is usually carried out by professionals through consultancy services, but there are also online tools that can be used to measure the approximate impact of a product and provide the necessary data.

What can be done at an individual farm level?  

To help farms measure their impact, xFarm has developed a module called  "Farm Sustainability". This module allows the automatic calculation of several environmental indicators for each crop. These indicators are the most important for the agricultural sector and we have listed them in the previous section: carbon footprint, water consumption, acidification and eutrophication.  

In line with the LCA approach and based on the best known databases used for agricultural product life cycle analysis (WFLDB, Agribalise, Ecointent, etc.), xFarm has integrated a large database so that each field activity, be it tillage, fertilisation, defence or irrigation, is associated with a specific emission coefficient for each of the indicators of interest. In this way, each time the user registers an activity on a crop, its environmental impact can be automatically visualised.  

At the end of the crop cycle, after harvest, the module provides not only the impact of the individual activities, but also the total impact per cultivated hectare (e.g. tonnes CO2eq/ha of tomatoes) or per unit of product (e.g. kg CO2eq/kg of tomato).  

For each crop and indicator, the weight of each impact category (e.g. fertilisers, seeds, cultivation practices and pesticides) and their respective breakdown into direct and indirect impacts can be displayed.  

This module is an important analytical tool for farms, allowing them to understand the impact of their activities and to look at the main causes. The visualisation of this information allows farmers to be more aware of their actions and provides them with the tools to reduce environmental impact.

Is it possible to act at the supply chain level?

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xFarm Technologies has developed the 'Farm Sustainability' module described above for individual farms. For agri-food companies, which have several farms in their supply chain, xFarm Technologies has developed a specific platform: Analytics. With an Analytics account, agri-food companies can keep track of the activities of each farm in the supply chain and monitor the trend of each farm's environmental impact. Depending on the needs and objectives, data can be viewed in aggregate - for example, the average impact per product type - or disaggregated to look more closely at the situation on individual farms. Analytics also makes it possible to compare two farms to understand the impact reduction potential associated with a given crop. It is therefore a comprehensive tool for monitoring and tracking sustainability indicators along the supply chain, providing the right tools for large-scale reduction and improvement strategies.  

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