PHOTO: TREVOR LUSH
SUSTAINABILITY ▶▶▶
Beta testing new National Environmental Sustainability Tool
The National Environmental Sustainability Tool (NEST) was developed by Egg Farmers of Canada to encourage further progress in lessening environmental impacts and the adoption of new, green technologies. It has now been launched in a test phase.
BY TREENA HEIN
Dr Nathan Pelletier, EFC research chair in sustainability at the University of British Colum- bia-Okanagan, whose team collaborated with EFC in developing NEST.
S
everal years in the making, the beta version of the National Environmental Sustainability Tool was re- cently released by Egg Farmers of Canada (EFC). This innovative online system is designed to empower
Canadian egg farmers to measure, monitor and manage the environmental footprint of their farms. By completing the ‘sustainability assessment’ in NEST, egg farmers can better understand key drivers of environmental performance on their farms – energy and water use, and more – while also ex- ploring comparisons to farms in their region and across the country. EFC CEO Tim Lambert notes that over the last five
decades, egg production in Canada has already made substantial progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and use of water, land and energy. Now NEST will enable egg farmers to go further.
Create action plans In NEST egg farmers will have access to the latest agricultural sustainability research as well as the ability to create an ac- tion plan, set sustainability goals, track farm progress and more. Dr Nathan Pelletier, EFC research chair in sustainability at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, whose team worked with EFC in developing NEST, adds that future ver- sions of NEST will harness the “massive amounts of data” on energy, feed, water use and other farm performance attrib- utes that’s collected by automated digital barn and farm management systems on Canadian egg farms, along with farm operating parameters and conditions. NEST anonymous- ly aggregates the data that is provided by the farmers so that egg farmers can see where they fit into the broader spectrum of sustainability performance across the sector while their confidentiality is protected. Both Lambert and Pelletier provided Poultry World with further details about NEST.
What is the spectrum of the specific sustainability metrics that can be measured and compared within the tool? Pelletier: “This first version of NEST focuses on farm perfor- mance metrics like hen productivity, feed use (e.g. feed con- version rate), water use, energy use (e.g. type and amount of energy used, including diesel, natural gas, solar, etc.) and ma- nure management. The next release of NEST will support farm-specific measurement of environmental footprints, such as carbon footprint, as well as provide the capacity to esti- mate footprint reductions that can be achieved by adopting farm-appropriate green technologies.”
Tell us about how the sustainability assessment works. Pelletier: “It’s organised into 28 questions, asking egg farmers to provide measurements for a complete flock cycle on how much and what type of energy is used per flock, what kind of
30 ▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 6, 2022
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