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SUSTAINABILITY


sustainability thinking has become the idea of three dimensions, environmental, social and economic sustainability.’ Our farmer-owned cooperative business model dictates that we cover the social and economic dimensions of sustainability on an ongoing basis. For this reason, we will focus on environmental sustainability in this article.


Given the wide array of metrics being used and pursued, we seek to measure what we can, to our best ability, and how that might connect to the needs of sustainability departments in the personal care industry. As a farming company, we hope this furthers the discussion of on- farm sustainability and begins to push the personal care industry towards holding suppliers responsible in a meaningful way. In conversations with customers, we noted that companies, manufacturers and brands are utilising different sustainability metrics. The most prevalent metric was greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) which includes the now infamous CO2


in addition to nitrous oxides and methane.


In our search to find a way to begin to quantify our sustainability on the farms in a meaningful way for our customers, we found a number of organisations already solving the problem. The most compelling was a calculator from an alliance of organisations called Field To Market (FTM). It strives to create continuous improvements in productivity, environmental quality and human wellbeing across the agricultural supply chain. Through innovative resources developed by FTM, growers and organisations better understand sustainability at the field, local and national levels. FTM brings together a diverse group of grower organisations; agribusinesses; food, fibre, restaurant and retail companies; conservation groups; universities and agency partners to focus on promoting, defining and measuring the sustainability of food, fibre and fuel production. Current members of FTM include Cargill, BASF, Dow, Unilever, Wal- Mart, and the World Resources Institute. The Fieldprint Calculator (FPC) is an online educational tool that helps alfalfa, corn, cotton, rice, wheat, potato and soybean growers better understand and communicate how management choices affect overall sustainability performance and operational efficiency. This tool allows growers to estimate performance on land use, conservation, soil carbon, irrigation water use, water quality, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions at the field level, while also comparing against local, state and national averages calculated from publically available data.


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Modelling three different crop rotation schemes The purpose of this investigation was to use the FPC to make comparisons of the environmental impacts of three crop rotation models on a typical South Willamette Valley soil. The chosen field site has a soil type and characteristics common to many of the Willamette Valley fields where OMG meadowfoam is grown. This site would be considered reasonably representative of approximately 70% of OMG meadowfoam production in any given crop year. The field has silty clay loam soil, high water table limitations throughout the majority of the growing season, and a minimal slope. The main points of emphasis of the FTC are


Table 1: The three cropping systems. Year 1


Cropping System 1 NT ARG


2 3 4 5


NT Meadowfoam NT ARG


NT Meadowfoam NT ARG


Sustainability indicators analysed by


the FPC are transformed into a ‘fieldprint’ which graphically represents each field’s unique operation. The FPC uses datasets and methodologies developed by multiple sources, including the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. We believe this to be the most robust system for measuring on-farm environmental impacts in the market today. For this reason, we have used the FPC to calculate metrics for on-farm impacts in energy, soil conservation, and energy usage.


Cropping System 2 NT ARG


NT ARG NT ARG


Conventional ARG NT ARG


Cropping System 3 NT ARG


NT ARG


NT Meadowfoam NT ARG NT ARG


management practices, and thus, we are using it to model our crop rotations of meadowfoam and annual ryegrass (ARG). For transparency’s sake, approximately 80% of our meadowfoam fields use a no-till (NT) crop rotation system. Crop rotation is the practice of incorporating different crops that have differing growth habits and production needs into a cropping system, thereby avoiding the pressures and pitfalls of monoculture production such as decreased soil health, increased pests and pathogens, and decreased soil stability. It also facilitates the use of minimum or no-till cropping practices, which are recognised as being very beneficial to building soil health and minimising the environmental impact of crop production practices on key areas such as water quality. Crop rotation is also considered a key element in sustainable cropping systems.6 In the absence of suitable rotation crops, farmers may find themselves reduced to growing the same crop or species repeatedly in the same site for long periods of time, a practice commonly referred to as monoculture production. These monocultures can easily become susceptible to increased pest pressures in the form of weeds, disease, and insects that become ever increasingly hard to


PERSONAL CARE Reprinted from February 2014


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