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

我们将开发一个全面集成的热带多年生作物环境决策支持工具，并提供完整的技术规范，以便纳入在线免费提供的Cool Farm tool。Cool Farm Tool由Cool Farm Alliance （CFA）所有，该联盟将参与这个项目。这是一项由企业主导的倡议，旨在评估和改善以农业为基础的供应链的可持续性。它通过会员模式提供资金，会员包括50多家公司，其中包括联合利华、百事可乐、喜力、达能、雀巢、玛莎百货和特易购等大型跨国公司。成员付费维护该工具，并在其供应链中大规模部署，但该联盟的核心原则是，该工具对农民来说永远是免费的。CFT本身是一种基于科学的决策支持工具，专为农场规模的农民设计使用。过去，它从NERC的重大发现和创新资助中受益，因此，在越来越多的地理位置（100多个国家）中，它包括了一套越来越多的作物和牲畜系统指标。几个案例研究表明，使用该工具产生的影响，例如百事可乐的“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至关重要，通常高度依赖发展援助委员会国家的小农，而这些国家的决策支持受到较少科学证据的阻碍，也是温带地区研究人员关注的焦点。该项目建立在以前NERC和威康信托基金的许多产出基础上，并利用项目合作伙伴之间建立的成功关系来确保交付。我们将在现有CFT方法的基础上开发模块，为热带多年生植物农业实践的碳足迹和水足迹以及生物多样性影响提供一站式评估工具。通过与凉爽农场联盟和540万英镑的惠康信托基金资助的SHEFS项目的合作，我们将确保提供一个对农民和供应链具有实用价值的工具。因此，这个以企业为主导、以科学为基础、以农民为中心的项目将提供强有力的指标，使农民能够参与并展示他们在国际供应链中为可持续发展所采取的积极行动，并使企业能够确定良好的做法，将其纳入其可持续采购战略。在一个单一的决策支持工具中，将农业实践的多重影响结合起来的可能性有很多吸引人的原因，尤其是它将减轻农民目前对多个买家的多重影响进行多重可疑价值评估的负担。

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.