Costco organic egg suppliers use the Cool Farm Tool to reduce GHG emissions

Costco organic egg suppliers use the
     Cool Farm Tool to reduce
          GHG emissions
               A case study describing a two-year supply chain
                        engagement project 2010-2012
                              September, 2012

If you go into a Costco store anywhere in the U.S, the organic eggs you’ll find on
the shelf will have a climate story to tell. For the past two years the organic
egg producers supplying Costco stores have been using the Cool Farm Tool to
gain insight into the carbon emissions of their operations. With support from
the Sustainable Food Lab, Costco has engaged its entire supply base in
a program designed to spur reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of
organic eggs.

A distinguishing feature of this program is its participatory and interactive nature.
In many carbon accounting exercises, the accounting is a “black box”, with only
the result—a “carbon footprint”—returned to the operation. Other similar
exercises calculate the carbon for each supplier in isolation. This program, on the
other hand, has learning and collaboration at its core.

In this program, the Costco organic egg suppliers receive the tools and training to
do self-assessments and run “what-if” scenarios. Using the Cool Farm Tool the

farmers determine their overall emissions receive a breakdown of emissions by
source so they can see what contributes the most. From here the farmers can
start to map out emissions reduction pathways and test reduction potentials.

Costco and the Sustainable Food Lab supplement these individual farm
assessments with annual summits, bringing the suppliers together to review and
discuss their experiences, ideas and results. From crop dirt to retail store, the
farmers can compare their performance to others in each emissions category and
in aggregate.

The growers are quick to take advantage of these opportunities to ask questions,
troubleshoot problems and, share ideas. One farmer introduced an idea to create
a better racking system for the delivery trucks in order to increase the
transport efficiency. Another farmer said, “We changed our feed ration to more of
a wheat-based diet and found that this had a real impact on lowering our overall
emissions. We’re wondering if other farms found this.”

There are no external targets imposed but the structure of the
annual assessments coupled with annual meetings seems to give the farmers
the motivation they need to strive for continuous improvement on one of the most
urgent issues of our time—climate change.

A participating farmer said, "This is helping us improve. I really appreciate value
of having a baseline so we can see our strengths and weaknesses and feel
challenged to improve."

Food companies today have a difficult challenge of engaging their supply chains
effectively on issues of sustainability beyond existing standards and certifications.
The Cool Farm Tool provides buyers with a concrete way to engage suppliers.
The outreach buyers do using the Cool Farm Tool can also provide the
foundation for building on additional sustainability issues and structuring a
framework for continuous improvement.

The Cool Farm Tool (CFT) in its present form is an Excel-based greenhouse gas
calculator. The CFT is free for growers to help them measure the carbon footprint
of crop and livestock products (see www.coolfarmtool.org for more information).
Unlike many other agricultural greenhouse gas calculators, the CFT includes
calculations of soil carbon sequestration, an important mechanism for both
mitigation and adaptation benefits.

                                                                                      

After piloting work with the Cool Farm Tool around the world over two years, a
group of Founding Partners launched the Cool Farm Institute in May of this year
(link to article). One of the Institute’s first priorities is to translate the Cool Farm
Tool into a web application.

Many users look to the Tool for carbon footprinting or as a metric for agricultural
GHG’s from suppliers. The Tool can be used for these purposes but the strength
of the Cool Farm Tool lies in its capacity to engage suppliers. With the Tool in
hand buyers can provide suppliers with a technical watering hole around which to
gather for discussions on impacts and options. It also provides the entre for
educational workshops on a range of sustainability issues. The Tool requires
input data but for suppliers with “audit fatigue” the ability to receive immediate
results and run test cases is a refreshing change.

For Costco, the organic egg supply chain project is an experiment. Sheri Flies is
Costco’s assistant general merchandise manager said, “For us, this is just a first
step. We’re testing this out on our organic egg program but depending on how it
goes, we’re interested in rolling this out on many more of our products and
regions.”

Early results are encouraging. Although the farmers expressed concern about
matching these results next year, a year one to year two comparison showed an
impressive absolute reduction of 7.2 percent.

One farm was able to show a 25 percent reduction in feed emissions due to an
increase in the wheat portion of the feed ration. Another farmer showed a

                                                                                           

transportation emission reduction of 30 percent (and overall reduction of 15
percent) as a result of sourcing a higher percentage of his feed from a more local
source.

The results show that feed emissions (the embedded emissions from feed
production) are the largest singe source of emissions for most farms and for the
supply chain in aggregate. Transportation of the feed, from field to mill and from
mill to farm is the second largest contributor.

In the course of the project Costco organic egg suppliers have also received
educational content on climate change and been learning together about biochar
and the importance of the production practices on the farms where they source
their feed.

From increasing local organic production to sharing information about the fiber
threshold of increased alfalfa and wheat in the feed ration, this conscientious
group of organic egg suppliers is on a path to increased sustainability and glad to
have a tool and a program by which to measure and motivate continuous
improvement.

                            
           
             

                                                     
 

                                                                   

                                                      

                                                                  

                                                      


                                

                                 


                

                


                           

                            

                                                  

                                                  


The farmers used the opportunity to discuss the finer points of production: the

problem of overloading the hens with wheat fiber, the benefit of wheat meal over
pellets, the trade-offs between wheat and an increase in dry matter intake the
possibilities of introducing a better stacking system on the trucks to
accommodate the Costco packaging, the decreasing supply of organic feed due
to higher conventional grain prices. There have been some of the barriers and
opportunities that have surfaced so far.