Cool farm tool

The Cool Farm Tool is a new greenhouse gas calculator for farming. It’s easy to use and gives instant results that invite users to try out alternatives and ask ‘what if’ questions.

The tool was commissioned by Unilever from the University of Aberdeen. The tool is ideal for farmers, supply chain managers and companies interested in quantifying their agricultural carbon footprint and finding practical ways of reducing it.

It calculates the greenhouse gas balance of farming, including emissions from fields, inputs, livestock, land use and land use change and primary processing. It uses ‘Tier2-type’ methods, offering users simple menu choices for parameters that farmers can influence to reduce their carbon footprint. Reporting greenhouse gas emissions is part of the Metric Reporting requirements of Unilevers Sustainable Agriculture Code.

The Cool Farm Tool calculator will be used in a multi-company project on agricultural climate mitigation co-ordinated by the Sustainable Food Laboratory, which includes Unilever, PepsiCo, Marks & Spencer, Pulse Canada, Yara, Sysco and others. If this is something that would be of interest to you, please visit The Sustainable Food Lab  to find out more. This Cool Farm Tool calculator is free and open source. It is provided under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 (UK: England & Wales).