US-based HowGood has launched FieldScope, a tool that helps food companies calculate, report and receive credit for the environmental impact of sustainable farming practices. The move aims to bridge the gap between on-farm methods and corporate environmental reporting by helping retailers and ingredient suppliers provide “instant calculations” on how agricultural practices affect their emissions.

HowGood is an independent research company and SaaS data platform with the “world’s largest” database on food product sustainability and over 90,000 on-farm emissions factors for food ingredients.

“Multiple headwinds are leading to an increased demand for F&B companies to quantify and communicate their commitment to sustainability. One is the quickly-evolving regulatory landscape in both the US and Europe and the other is a market shift in consumer demand for sustainable products and corporate transparency,” Nina DePalma, VP of Product at HowGood, tells Food Ingredients First.

“On the regulatory and voluntary reporting front, F&B companies are required to report on their climate impact with increasing accuracy and granularity. Not only must they calculate the energy used in their own operations, but also the carbon footprint of their entire supply chains.”

Meanwhile, consumers are becoming “increasingly climate-conscious” as the impact of climate change becomes much more tangible to them first-hand. They are turning to sustainable shopping habits and are “more likely to buy from brands with a clear commitment to creating a positive impact on the environment,” she observes.

While transparency around sustainability and emissions reduction efforts is imperative for brands to build trust with consumers and satisfy reporting requirements, DePalma believes “brands need to quantify the impact of these efforts to demonstrate real progress.”

“While food industry leaders have made immense strides in their sustainability goals, their ability to quantify this progress is not up to par. They must be able to report the impact of their sustainable innovation as effectively as they enact it, or they’ll continue to fall behind in meeting demand for accuracy and, in turn, transparency,” she notes.

Calculating carbon footprint

FieldScope can help companies model carbon impacts at the farm level, accurately calculate product and corporate carbon footprints and account for regenerative practices and carbon removals. DePalma highlights some key benefits of the tool.

“Granular, real-time data on the carbon impact of no-tillage, fertilizer use and other on-farm practices helps pinpoint areas wher efficient reduction can be improved. Farm-level data improves accuracy around Product and Corporate Carbon Footprints for internal decision-making and direct customer reporting.”

Additionally, accurate measurements of regenerative agriculture initiatives and carbon removal efforts ensure companies receive “full credit” for their investments in sustainable practices.

The tool aims to make quantifying environmental impact at corporate scale in real-time easier and “strengthens the relationship between food companies and their supply chain partners, as well as the joint mission to create meaningful environmental change by removing data silos and enabling agile insights,” says DePalma.

FieldScope reflects the impact of on-farm practices in company-level emissions reporting and reveals the “true ROI of investing in regenerative agriculture practices — all visualized in real-time.”

“Sustainability intelligence”

DePalma explains how FieldScope uses “sustainability intelligence” to provide “not only the highly-granular calculation of your full supply chain impact, but also the insights required to take effective and efficient action toward impact reduction.”

“Data doesn’t lie — it provides actionable insights on wher brands have delivered on their sustainability promises and wher they can accelerate. That’s how we define sustainability intelligence: data that helps companies accurately measure, manage and reduce their environmental impact.

“This is especially important for the F&B industry, with food systems contributing 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainability intelligence isn’t just about reporting on emissions; it’s what leads to real impact reduction across the food industry,” she continues.

In September, HowGood partnered with Informatica, which works on AI-powered cloud data management to help companies and food suppliers make data-driven sustainability decisions.

Market accessibility and future

DePalma tells us that HowGood has never released a product improvement that has led to “more immediate” demand from our customers and the larger market.

“Clearly, FieldScope is addressing a pain point that has been felt across the industry for accurate reflection of on-farm practices, both as a means for reporting to customer stakeholders, as well as informing internal decision-making.”

“In the future, we want FieldScope to be accessible to as many F&B brands, retailers, food service companies and ingredient suppliers to set a new industry standard for automated, granular measurement,” she concludes.

Last year, HowGood partnered with SES-imagotag, a global specialist in electronic shelf tags and IoT solutions, to provide environmental sustainability labels for Carrefour supermarket products in the UAE.