Overview
Field to Market History
Here are some relevant highlights from our history.
2006
First Meeting
Interested stakeholders from across the agricultural supply chain come together to explore a conversation on sustainability, in a meeting convened by The Keystone Policy Center.
Field to Market emerges as a collaborative effort emphasizing the inclusion of diverse perspectives, a foundation of science- and outcomes-based approaches to sustainability, and a focus on commodity crops with recognition of their unique supply chains.
2009
Launch of the Beta Fieldprint Calculator
Growers use the free, online calculator to confidentially explore the relationship between their management practices and key environmental outcomes (land use, irrigation water use, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and soil loss) and to benchmark themselves against state and national averages.
2017
Integrated Sustainability Metrics into Leading Platforms for Farm Management, Precision Agriculture, and Decision Support
Field to Market announces a comprehensive integration between the sustainability metrics and algorithms of the Fieldprint® Platform and leading precision agriculture, decision support and farm management software solutions. Key to this integration is the launch of the Fieldprint® Application Programming Interface (API), which connects Field to Market’s metrics directly into the partnering software solutions.
2021
Launched Fieldprint Platform 4.0
2024
Look forward to another annual release of Fieldprint Platform improvements around June.
Field to Market Overview
View presentation slides (Need new link).
Company sustainability goals
Many of Field to members have made public commitments to climate action and sustainability. Here are some examples pulled in Dec 2022.
PepsiCo
Reducing Scope 3 emissions by 40%” with respect to 2015 baseline by 2030
1 regenerative agriculture acres defined with reference to FTM metrics
Mondelez
Our goal3 is to achieve 10% end-to-end CO2 emissions reductions by 2025 (vs. 2018)
ADM
…reduce the company’s Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2035 against a 2019 baseline…
Demonstrating Progress
How can these companies demonstrate progress toward sustainability goals?
Field to Market Fieldprint Calculator
Field to Market Projects
Field to Market Metrics
The Field to Market sustainability metrics include
| Metric | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Energy Use ⛽ | Calculates all energy used in the production of one crop in one year, from pre-planting activities to the first point of sale. This means that it considers the embedded energy used to produce seed, fertilizer, and chemicals applied to the field. | Quantitative |
| Greenhouse Gas Emissions 😮💨 | Calculates the total greenhouse gas emissions from four main sources—energy use, nitrous oxide emissions from soils, methane emissions (from flooded fields) and emissions from residue burning. | Quantitative |
| Soil Erosion ⛰️ | Measures soil lost to erosion from water and wind, which is shown to a farmer as tons of soil lost per acre. | Quantitative |
| Irrigation Water Use 🚿 | Accounts for the amount of water used to achieve an increase in crop yield. | Quantitative |
| Land Use 🏕️ | Looks at productivity by accounting for how much land is used to produce a crop. | Quantitative |
| Biodiversity 🦆 | Habitate Potential Index measures the capacity of a farm to support habitat for plants and animals. This could look at things like flooded rice fields that support migrating waterfowl, or edge of field areas that allow for wildlife to form habitat. | Qualitative Index |
| Soil Carbon 🌱 | Utilizes a USDA NRCS tool, the Soil Conditioning Index (SCI), to analyze whether a field is gaining or losing carbon. | Qualitative Index |
| Water Quality 💧 | Provides a detailed assessment of the risk of nutrient loss into local waterways, and shows how well practices are mitigating that risk. | Qualitative Index |
Putting data into the tool
As you begin analyzing your management practices in the Fieldprint Platform, there are a number of pieces of data you will need to have on hand. Refer to this checklist to learn what information you will need to answer questions embedded in each of the four steps in the Platform.
Where does that data go? Which metrics use which data?
This sheet tabulates the connections.