The CEA Alliance says it has released the industry’s first sustainability framework developed by indoor growers for indoor growers, an announcement made at the Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit.
CEA Alliance says the framework will drive credibility, transparency and continuous improvement through standardized approaches for sustainability measurement, guiding indoor growers through both key impacts to measure and metrics for measuring them.
This new framework includes 60 metrics that support 20 key performance indicators across a variety of environmental and social aspects of indoor growing, according to a news release, including:
- Natural resource and climate impacts.
- Pesticide use.
- Waste generation.
- Food safety.
- Employment practices.
- Community engagement.
- Food security impacts.
“The ability to measure, optimize and improve impacts are a critical part of indoor agriculture’s value proposition for consumers, communities, the environment, and a more sustainable future for the food system overall,” Tom Stenzel, CEA Alliance executive director, said in the release.
CEA Alliance says the metrics framework can be used by indoor growers as a data-driven way to assess and communicate key impacts that are material to indoor growers as well as broader ESG stakeholders; identify opportunities for improvement; and measure progress over time. Given the diverse and evolving nature of the innovative CEA industry, the framework was also designed to be simple, inclusive, flexible and outcomes-based, so any producer at any stage of growth or type of system can apply it to where they are on their sustainability journey, the release said.
CEA Alliance says it worked with a producer working group as well as industry, retail, academia, government and nonprofit organizations to develop the framework to better suit the growing conditions of high-tech indoor farms.
The alliance says field metrics and benchmarks for outdoor production often measure water use with estimated irrigation volumes but do not account for equipment washing, cooling, produce washing and processing. Since CEA agriculture encompasses all of those aspects, the alliance says it was important to more accurately measure water use across all stages of production.
“The CEA Alliance believes an industry-led commitment to standardized measurement is important to achieving and understanding true value; that’s why we’ve proactively come together to develop these metrics,” Stenzel said. “We hope this framework will support indoor growers at every stage of their sustainability journey, as well as encourage outdoor growers, packers and processors to include the entire supply chain from field to finished product in their measurement of impacts.”
The CEA Alliance’s full “Sustainability Framework for Controlled Environment Agriculture” can be viewed at ceaalliance.com/resources.
