BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
American farmers have always valued conservation and productivity, stewarding their natural resources for the next season and future generations. By improving farm productivity and profitability, farmers are better equipped to feed
the global population and preserve valuable resources. Syngenta recently announced the release of the Sustainable
Outcomes in Agriculture (SOA) standard enabled through Cropwise® Sustainability. The new Cropwise® Sustainability App puts actionable sustainability insights directly into the hands of growers. The farmer-first tool tracks and measures progress in areas such as crop production, water impact, soil health, biodiversity, community leadership, and human and animal health. The Cropwise® Sustainability App and SOA quickly identify opportunities for improvement, alongside key actionable insights, for the farmer to consider throughout the crop sustainability planning process.
By incorporating the Syngenta SOA standard, the one-ofa-kind app provides an actionable approach to identifying, measuring, and delivering continuous improvements for regenerative agriculture at scale across the value chain.
ACTIONS
Through the implementation of the Syngenta SOA standard, Cropwise® Sustainability provides an actionable approach to identifying, measuring, and delivering continuous improvements for regenerative agriculture at scale across six sustainability outcomes: optimal production, water impact, soil health, biodiversity and habitat, human and animal health, and community leadership. The simple, accurate tool prompts users to answer questions about their farm production practices and decisions. For example, growers mark based on a series of options all of the conservation practices they use on their farm.
Leadership scores and a performance report are generated based on sustainable outcomes and opportunities for improvement and key actionable insights are identified.
Through Syngenta’s data privacy pledge, growers maintain the ownership of their data. Growers can decide to share their assessment results with business partners, such
as value chain companies, to meet sustainable sourcing requirements. Partners receive anonymized aggregated reports based off assessments, providing a view of their
sourcing area and where opportunities for sustainability improvement exists.
Syngenta has expanded its sustainability leadership by becoming the first agricultural input provider to launch a standard and to receive the Sustainable Ag Initiative’s (SAI) Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) 3.0 gold-equivalency. Value chain actors can now use the SOA to recognize sustainably-sourced crops and product volumes verified by a third-party of up to FSA v3.0 gold equivalence.
RESULTS
The SOA and Cropwise® Sustainability App enable growers to improve their operations across all aspects of sustainable agriculture. Producers can better understand, and, where appropriate, improve their operations across the six outcomes in the SOA. Impacts of the app’s implementation include:
Social: Producers can examine their worker and neighbor protections, worker opportunities, worker conditions, education and training, and how they engage in their community. Through examining these impacts, producers can understand their leadership score compared to other farms in their community, receive insights on practices being implemented by other sustainability leaders, and share aggregated and anonymized results for their farm community with business partners. Once producers and value chain actors understand where their operation or supply stands relative to the outcomes, they can identify areas to improve and focus their efforts in subsequent years.
Environmental: Producers can examine how they manage runoff and wind erosion, soil function, water management, their conservation efforts, habitat quality, and pollinator management. Keeping track of this valuable information allows farmers to be able to set environmental goals for future seasons.
Economic: Producers can examine their use of planning records, including how they make in-season adjustments, use of precision and decision technology, how they manage their fuel energy, electricity, and equipment, crop loss and waste reduction, their irrigation infrastructure, and irrigation planning. Thorough understanding of input usage and on-farm actions will ultimately lead to greater savings and higher productivity.
SUCCESSES AND LESSONS LEARNED
Syngenta recognizes that farmers and value chain partners need a simple tool to understand the sustainability of their operation or supply. The SOA implemented through the Cropwise® Sustainability App provides this simplicity. Further, the gold-equivalency to SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) 3.0 allows for global recognition of sustainably sourced crops and product volumes.
Cropwise ® Sustainability has been introduced to multiple farmers and partners who have used it to assess over 100,000 acres across diverse crops. Additional launches are planned in Argentina, Canada, France, Mexico, Morocco, and across multiple sites in Europe. Farmer and partner feedback is continuously evaluated to ensure the app is relevant in the region it is being used in and is updated accordingly in subsequent versions.