By Alan Dangour, MSc PhD RNutr, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Francesca Harris, MSc, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Benjamin Kayatz, MSc, University of Aberdeen; and Jon Hiller, PhD, University of Edinburgh With a population of 1.2 billion people and rapidly changing dietary habits, the health and environmental impacts of diets in India is a major … Read More
Global climate action plan highlights key role of food and agriculture
By Cool Farm Alliance member and Chief Technical Advisor for Anthesis, Craig Simmons Project Drawdown, a new book containing research assembled and edited by sustainability guru Paul Hawken, highlights the importance of food and agriculture in mitigating global carbon emissions. Billed as the ‘most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming’, Drawdown maps, measures, models and describes in detail … Read More
Webinar: New GHG Model for Perennial Crops
Recording and slides from this event now available: Recording Slides Join the Cool Farm Alliance for a presentation on a new generic improved model to calculate the carbon balance and GHG emissions from all perennial crops, both food and bioenergy. This work has been led by Dr Jon Hillier and team at Aberdeen University. We are now ready to share … Read More
Q&A from the Cool Farm Tool online launch event
The more than 100 questions that came in during our 90 minute Cool Farm Tool online launch event this past September, give an indication of how widely Cool Farm Tool interest is spread across the globe, across crops and farm systems types. Here is a sampling of questions and answers.
Smart farmers opt for the power of data with the Cool Farm Tool
By Yvette Faber, Solidaridad Science and technology will soon be integrated in the farms of the future. With the launch of the online Cool Farm Tool (Sept 29, 2016), farmers now have access to hard data that shows the effect of their farming practices and how to improve them – right in their own hands. But are we going too … Read More
Danone’s journey to the Cool Farm Alliance
At the end of 2015, Danone announced a very ambitious objective: to become a Zero Net Carbon Company by 2050, covering full scopes including agriculture. The challenge is huge and it starts by getting robust and reliable methods and tools to monitor the progress of the greenhouse gas footprints of the agricultural raw materials we source, mainly raw milk. Even … Read More
Mandate for rapid reduction
The Cool Farm Tool has evolved to become THE global farm-level tool for measuring carbon. Our mandate now is to manage a rapid reduction of emissions. Measurement might turn out to have been the easy part. The Cool Farm Tool began modestly. After Unilever and the University of Aberdeen developed a beta version of the tool, Christof Walter said he … Read More
Finding the frequency for sustainable ag
Having worked full time in sustainable development within the corporate sector for the past 15 years I have seen many changes, from a focus on energy, water, waste within the factory through to highly conceptual (and practical) ideas like the Natural Step from Sweden and Shared Value from Michael Porter at Harvard. With very tangible aspects like energy management, where … Read More
Why would a farmer use the Cool Farm Tool?
Farmers think primarily in input and output, in costs, yield and margin. The current Cool Farm Tool (CFT) provides insight into greenhouse gases and biodiversity. To the farmer, neither has direct obvious impact on costs, yields or margin. So why would he or she, with little love for surveys and paperwork, use the CFT at all? Let’s face it, most … Read More
The Cool Farm Tool: Driving sustainability in supply chains
Gold Standard The Cool Farm Tool is an online calculator that enables farmers to measure their greenhouse gas emissions, and understand mitigation options for agricultural production. Originally initiated by Unilever, the Cool Farm Alliance is dedicated to driving down emissions from global agriculture. Here Daniella Malin of the Cool Farm Alliance introduces the vital role agriculture must play in the … Read More