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Nebraska Ag News Headlines
Research Aims to Quantify Sustainability of Supply Chain
Nebraska Ag Connection - 06/21/2018

A multi-disciplinary team of researchers at the University of Nebraska--Lincoln will conduct a project targeting the sustainability of Nebraska's supply chain. The project is funded by a $15,510 grant from the Nebraska Environmental Trust.

National Ag Statistics Service lists Nebraska farms accounting for 91 percent of Nebraska's land with farms covering 43.2 million acres. With such a large amount of land controlled by farmers the sustainability on these acres is critical to overall sustainability.

"The first step toward a more sustainable agriculture sector is to quantify the sustainability of the supply chain," said project leader John Hay, extension educator with Nebraska Extension

A diverse group of 80 private and public stakeholders worked together to develop the Field to Market sustainability initiative for commodity crop production, including a tool to aid in quantifying sustainability from crop fields. From this effort came the Fieldprint calculator tool. Nebraska Extension will work with farmers to use the tool with a goal of continuous improvement leading to increased sustainability.

The Fieldprint Calculator assesses sustainability in the areas of land use, conservation, soil carbon, irrigation water use, water quality, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions. The tool will enable farmers to quantify and visualize the sustainability of their fields, and compare their sustainability metrics with peers using local, state and national averages.

"We will use this information to help farmers make management decision to reduce inputs and increase sustainability," Hay said.

According to Hay, previous work with the Fieldprint Calculator has provided strong results with 45-85 percent of participating farmers planning to change some practices in the areas assessed to improve sustainability. The project is one of the 105 projects receiving $18,301,819 in grant awards from the Nebraska Environmental Trust this year. The Nebraska Legislature created the Nebraska Environmental Trust in 1992. Using revenue from the Nebraska Lottery, the Trust has provided over $289 million in grants to over 2,000 projects across the state.


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