Agricultural Climate Stewardship

Climate Assessment Launch  At least a dozen companies are teaming up to estimate the greenhouse gas footprint of specific farming systems and talk with farmers to figure out how to reduce that footprint as rapidly  and efficiently as possible. Christof Walter from Unilever explains, “The Cool Farm Tool will help us understand what practices make the biggest difference in any particular farm situation..."  READ MORE

  Worldwatch Land Use & Climate Report 2009   Sustainable Food Lab work referenced page 31.  

October 2009 Agricultural Climate Stewardship Meeting Report

June 2009: Climate Webinar Resource links - please find all four presentations from our recent Webinar series here: Carbon Trusts Crop Calculator,  Farmer Focused GHG Calculator,  DAYCENT Model Description - Testing and Application for GHG Emission Inventories, DNDC Model.

Recordings of the Webinars can be found at the following links:
  • Webinar 1 - featuring the DAYCENT and Carbon Trust tools. 
  • Webinar 2 - featuring the DNDC model and Farmer Focused GHG Calculator ("Unilever Tool").
  • Webinar 3 - where we heard from participants and discussed the applicability of these tools to three purposes: The Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, carbon footprinting, and decision support for farmers.  
  • We had a fourth Webinar that came out of the first three in which Earth Analytics Group demo'ed the CASA model. The recording from this can be found here and slides here.

 

With the support of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Sustainable Food Lab focuses Ag Climate work on investigating and incentivizing the role of agriculture in climate change mitigation - through both academic research and quantification of actual carbon performance from changed practices in pilot projects. Please see the attached concept paper for a condensed description of the scope of this project work. Interested companies are now in a position to benefit from these resources for assistance investigating - and possibly implementing potential carbon savings from the field level practices in supply chains.

The Food Lab is creating a learning community of organizations (from both within and outside the Food Lab)  exploring low-carbon farming techniques, experimenting with changes, and as promising experimental results emerge, quantifying and potentially monetizing the climate benefits that may result from larger scale versions of those experiments.

Please feel free to contact us about this work and let us know if you have questions or interest in partnering.

Farming for a Low Carbon Economy