LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 6A: TOOLS AND DATABASES 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Management and reduction of on-farm GHG emissions using the
‘Cool Farm Tool’: a case study on field tomato production
Emma Keller 1,2,* , Jaqi Lee 1 , Roland Clift 1 , Llorenç Milà i Canals 2 , Henry King 2 , Jon Hillier 3
1 University of Surrey, Centre of Environmental Strategy (CES), Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK
2 Unilever, Safety and Environmental Assurance (SEAC), Colworth Science Park, Sharnbrook, MK44 1LQ, UK
3 University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, Cruickshank Building,
St Machar Drive, Aberdeen AB24 3UU, UK
Corresponding author. E-mail: e.keller@surrey.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
Globally, agriculture and land use change accounts for approximately 10-12% of GHG emissions (Smith et al., 2007) but also presents
significant potential for mitigation (Smith et al., 2008). It has thus become a political focal point for emissions reduction. If this
is to be realised, attention must be paid to the basic unit of agriculture, the farm. Effectively managing GHG emissions at the farm
level can be achieved through the deployment of well documented good agricultural practices (GAPs) and resource optimisation.
Quantifying and measuring farm level GHG impacts however, can provide additional insights and opportunities for reduction which
farmers typically lack.
The Cool Farm Tool, developed by Hillier et al., (2011), is a multi-crop, globally applicable, farm-scale GHG calculator with high
management sensitivity relevant for the farmer’s specific system. It integrates a number of globally determined empirical models
(Hillier et al., 2011) and requires information inputs easily accessible to farmers (e.g. fertiliser application, tillage practices), enabling
them to measure their own farm GHG impact and explore different emission reduction scenarios. It therefore provides decision support
to encourage low carbon farming and offers a low-cost (it’s open source) and robust means of measuring on-farm GHG emissions
quickly and with instant results. The tool has recently been deployed at scale through the ‘Cool Farming Options’ project
hosted by the Sustainable Food Lab (2011). In this project a number of companies from around the world have been using the tool
within a diverse range of food supply chains and in doing so, have begun to build up a multi-crop and multi-regional data repository.
This paper presents a case study of the application of the Cool Farm Tool in its first year with field tomato growers from several
farms supplying into a global supply chain. It describes the emissions profiles of these farms and illustrates the variability inherent
among farming systems globally as a function of variability in management practices, climate, geography, soil properties and technology
used. In addition these GHG figures are compared to current published literature sources and modelled data (Nemecek et al.,
2012) to demonstrate the potential of the Cool Farm Tool as a data provider at a territorial or regional level. Finally some conclusions
and potential future developments for the tool methodology and use are presented.
References
Hillier, J., Walter, C., Malin, D., Garcia-Suarez, T., Milà i Canals, L. & Smith, P., 2011. A farm-focused calculator for emissions
from crop and livestock production. Environmental Modelling & Software, 26, 1070-1078.
Nemecek, T, J., Weiler, K., Plassmann, K., Schnetzer, J., Gaillard, G., Jefferies, D., Garcia-Suarez, T., King, H., Milà i Canals, L.,
2012. Estimation of the variability in global warming potential of a worldwide crop production using a modular extrapolation approach.
Journal of Cleaner Production. (Submitted).
Smith, P., D. Martino, Z. Cai, D. Gwary, H. Janzen, P. Kumar, B. McCarl, S. Ogle, F. O’Mara, C. Rice, B. Scholes, O. Sirotenko.,
2007. Agriculture, in: [B. Metz, O.R. Davidson, P.R. Bosch, R. Dave, L.A. Meyer (Eds.)], Climate Change 2007: Mitigation.
Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change., Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, US.
Smith, P., D. Martino, Z. Cai, D. Gwary, H. Janzen, P. Kumar, B. McCarl, S. Ogle, F. O’Mara, C. Rice, B. Scholes, O. Sirotenko,
Howden, M., McAllister, T., Pan, G., Romanenkov, V., Schneider, U., Towprayoon, S., Wattenbach, M. & Smith, J. U., 2008.
Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 363, 789-813.
Sustainable Food Lab, 2011. Cool farming options. [Online] Available from: http://www.sustainablefoodlab.org/projects/climate
(Accessed: 10/02/12).
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