The Sustainability Consortium and The Cool Farm Alliance Form Partnership to Link On-Farm Sustainability Management to Retailers’ Sustainability Goals
TSC and CFA signed a memorandum of understanding to help food and beverage companies better measure and manage GHG emissions, water, and biodiversity in agriculture supply chains
SCOTTSDALE, AZ, October 2, 2017 – The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) and The Cool Farm Alliance (CFA) signed a memorandum of understanding to improve alignment and reporting of farm-level metrics data. Through this partnership and CFA’s interaction with and feedback from farmers, TSC hopes to make reporting on farm-level sustainability metrics easier for both farmers and food manufacturers.
CFA and TSC share an interest collaborating to quantify greenhouse gas emissions, water, and biodiversity for agricultural supply chains. Under this new partnership, CFA will continue to focus on alignment with TSC and will work together to identify future opportunities. CFA currently provides growers with the tools and metrics that enable them to report on TSC’s key performance indicators as a part of retailer sustainability surveys.
Under this new agreement TSC and CFA will have mutual membership to each other’s organization. Both TSC and CFA will focus on supporting alignment with CFA’s Cool Farm Tool, a free, online tool available to farmers everywhere. The Cool Farm Tool is supported by Cool Farm Alliance members and enables farmers to quantify and understand farm-related environmental impacts. The results of the Cool Farm Tool can be reported to TSC’s greenhouse gas KPI by a brand manufacturer.
Dr. Christy Slay, Director of Research for TSC said, “TSC has been working with CFA for several years now, and we are excited to formalize this partnership agreement. By working together we can streamline the reporting experience for growers and food manufacturers, making it easier to communicate sustainability data.”
Daniella Malin, CFA’s Deputy General Manager said: “We are delighted to announce this partnership with TSC. The Cool Farm Tool is becoming increasingly widely used in supply chains around the world, and we are eager for its uptake by farmers to support complementary sustainability programs like TSC. We look forward to a long and fruitful working partnership.”
This partnership with TSC represents another significant milestone in making the Cool Farm Tool available to pioneering businesses that are driving sustainability in their supply chains. The Cool Farm Tool was created to facilitate climate change mitigation in agricultural supply chains. In order to tackle other on-farm sustainability requirements, CFA is has added additional metrics to the Cool Farm Tool, starting with water and biodiversity.
About TSC
The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) is a global organization transforming the consumer goods industry to deliver more sustainable consumer products. We are dedicated to improving the sustainability of consumer products. Our members and partners include manufacturers, retailers, suppliers, service providers, NGOs, civil society organizations, governmental agencies and academics. Each member brings valuable perspectives and expertise. TSC convenes our diverse stakeholders to work collaboratively to build science-based decision tools and solutions that address sustainability issues that are materially important throughout a product’s supply chain and lifecycle. TSC also offers a portfolio of services to help drive effective implementation. Our mission is to use the best sustainability science to help companies make the everyday products we use better and more sustainable. The Sustainability Consortium has more than 100 members and there are over 2,000 users of TSC tools worldwide; it convenes more than 200 global organizations annually over an average of 75 networking opportunities. Formed in 2009, TSC is jointly administered by Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas. It also has a European office at Wageningen University and Research, and a Chinese office in Tianjin, China. For more information visit www.sustainabilityconsortium.org.
About CFA
The Cool Farm Alliance (CFA) is a not-for-profit industry platform that owns, manages, and develops the Cool Farm Tool, a globally applicable sustainable agriculture calculator used by thousands of farmers in over 60 countries supplying global markets. The CFA’s membership includes many of the world’s leading food and beverage, companies, input providers, NGO’s and academic institutions who already use the CFT and co-own and co-develop it further. The Cool Farm Alliance is growing rapidly, with 43 members and an integration with SAI Platform’s FSA almost complete. For more information visit https://coolfarmtool.org/.
For media inquiries:
Erika Ferrin
Director of Marketing, Communication and Development
The Sustainability Consortium
480-965-7752
erika.ferrin@sustainabilityconsortium.org
