Terms, concepts, definitions related to the project.
Yield Scaled Emissions: Emissions are expressed in kg or tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Our focus is how many emissions are generated per unit of food produced. For reference, rice production in India generates 5.65 kg CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per kilogram or 5.65 CO2eq kg-1. Source.
Climate Smart Agriculture: From the FAO: “an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate. CSA aims to tackle three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.”
We may also use the term “sustainable intensification.” The idea is to take approach which aligns environmental and sustainable development objectives or where there is convergence between farmer private interests (eg income, resilience) with lower emissions and other environmental / ecosystem benefits.
GHG Emission Estimates: We are using third party models to estimate the carbon footprint of agricultural products. There are a few tiers of models: “Tier 1 includes low-accuracy methodologies, which can be applied by using the default emission factors provided by the IPCC; Tier 2 methodologies require the use of national emission factors reflecting local pedo-climatic characteristics; finally, Tier 3 methodologies are based on model simulations or in situ measurements.” More detail on CoolFarmTool which is one of the models we are using:
For crops, the Cool Farm Tool incorporates Tier 1, Tier 2 and when it comes to N2O emissions and soil carbon sequestration, a “simple Tier 3” model – as described by Prof. Pete Smith – as it is a multi-factoral empirical model based on Bouwman, which is widely acknowledged in the public domain. The Cool Farm Tool is moving towards Tier 3 whenever possible. Source