International: Integrating globally-recognised sustainability metrics for tropical perennial crops in a one-stop shop Cool Farm Tool

我们将为热带多年生作物开发一个完全集成的环境决策支持工具，并提供完整的技术规范，以纳入在线和免费提供的Cool Farm工具。Cool Farm工具归Cool Farm Alliance(CFA)所有，该联盟将成为此项目的合作伙伴。这是一项企业主导的倡议，旨在评估和改善以农业为基础的供应链的可持续性。它是通过会员制模式筹集资金的，成员包括50多家公司，例如包括联合利华、百事可乐、喜力、达能、雀巢、玛莎百货和乐购等大型跨国公司。成员付费维护工具并在其供应链中大规模部署，但联盟的一项核心原则是，该工具现在是，而且将永远是农民免费使用的。CFT本身是一个以科学为基础的决策支持工具，专为农场规模的农民使用。它过去曾受益于NERC的大量发现和创新资金，因此包括越来越多的地理位置(超过100个国家)的作物和牲畜系统的一套日益增长的指标。几个案例研究显示了使用该工具所产生的影响，例如，百事公司的“50-in-5”(http://pepsico.co.uk/live/story/celebrating-sustainable-farming)和北美的鸡蛋生产导致初级生产的碳足迹减少了25%(Vetter等人，2018年)。热带多年生作物对全球粮食供应链非常重要，通常高度依赖发援国的小农，在这些国家，决策支持受到阻碍，科学证据较少，温带地区的研究人员也不太关注。该项目建立在NERC和Wellcome Trust之前的许多成果的基础上，并利用项目合作伙伴之间建立的成功关系来确保交付。我们将围绕现有的CFT方法开发模块，以便提供一站式评估工具，评估热带多年生植物农场实践的碳足迹和水足迹以及生物多样性影响。通过与酷农场联盟和GB 540万惠康信托基金资助的SHEFS项目的合作，我们将确保交付一种对农民和供应链具有实用价值的工具。因此，这个由企业主导、以科学为基础、以农民为重点的项目将提供强有力的衡量标准，使农民能够参与并展示他们在可持续发展方面的积极行动，使企业能够确定良好做法，将其嵌入其可持续采购战略。在一个单一的决策支持工具中结合农场做法的多种影响的可能性具有吸引力，原因有很多，尤其是它将减轻农民目前的负担，即为多个买家对多种影响进行多项可疑价值评估。

We will develop a fully integrated environmental decision support tool for tropical perennial crops and deliver a full technical specification for inclusion into the online, and freely available Cool Farm Tool. The Cool Farm Tool is owned by the Cool Farm Alliance (CFA) who will partner on this project. It is a business-led initiative to assess and improve the sustainability of agriculture-based supply chains. It is funded via a membership model, with membership consisting of over 50 companies including for example major multinationals such as Unilever, PepsiCo, Heineken, Danone, Nestle, Marks and Spencer, and Tesco. Members pay to maintain the tool and deploy at scale in their supply chains but it is a core principle of the Alliance that the tool is and will always be free-to-use for farmers. The CFT itself is a science-based decision support tool designed for use by farmers at farm scale. It has benefitted from significant NERC Discovery and Innovation funding in the past and as a result includes a growing suite of metrics for crop and livestock systems in an expanding set of geographic locations (over 100 countries). Several case studies have shown the impact that has been derived using the tool, for example PepsiCo's "50-in-5" (http://pepsico.co.uk/live/story/celebrating-sustainable-farming) and egg production in North America resulting in a 25% reduction in the carbon footprint from primary production (Vetter et al 2018). Tropical perennial crops are of huge importance to global food supply chains and typically have high dependence on smallholder farmers in DAC countries where decision-support has been hindered less scientific evidence and the focus of researchers in temperate regions. This project build on numerous previous NERC and Wellcome Trust outputs and exploits established successful relationships between the project partners to ensure delivery. We will develop modules based around the existing CFT methods to allow a one-stop shop assessment tool for carbon and water footprinting and biodiversity impacts of farm practice in tropical perennials. Through partnership with the Cool Farm Alliance and the £5.4M Wellcome Trust funded SHEFS project we will ensure delivery of a tool which has practical value to farmers and supply chains. This business-led, science-based, and farmer-focused project will thereby provide robust metrics which will allow farmers to engage and demonstrate their positive actions for sustainability into international supply chains, and the businesses to identify good practices to embed in their sustainable sourcing strategies. The possibility to combine, in a single decision support tool, the multiple impacts of farm practices is attractive for many reasons, not least being that it will reduce the current burden on farmers to conduct multiple assessments of dubious value on multiple impacts for multiple buyers.