A holistic sustainability platform for Northern Ireland’s Agri-Food Sector
The Food Futures project adopts a unique participatory approach to evidence and enhance the sustainability of Northern Ireland Agri-Food. The objective is to develop a holistic Sustainability Platform including reporting tool for agri-food supply chains. Robust, industry wide, evidence-based tools will generate reports for use by the industry and consumers.
Under the pillars of Economic, Environmental and Social and Ethical sustainability, simple, user friendly, scientifically robust metrics will be developed. These complex metrics will be prioritized and consolidated into a single indicator of sustainability. The integration of existing data flows with Northern Ireland Agri-Food industry and new novel world-leading outcomes of sustainability related projects will feed into the development of the toolkit.
The toolkit will not only quantify sustainability in the broadest sense but will also help to:
Support behavioural change to improve sustainability footprint
Identify areas for knowledge exchange
Identify knowledge gaps which may inform future Research and Development priorities for each supply chain, sector and the wider industry.
Food Futures is designed to bring together into a robust tool, information from across the agri-food supply chains relating to all the core pillars of sustainability. Its purpose is to provide a quantifiable indicator of the sustainability of food production in a holistic manner. This industry wide tool will
Provide a robust, science-based platform for driving behavioural change relating to the sustainability credentials of our livestock products including efficiency of production. This will therefore help protect and enhance the agri-food sector for current and future generations
Provide a unique, defendable, evidence base to assist in the marketing of the Northern Ireland livestock products locally, nationally and globally
Create a platform from which to capture and credit components that will enhance the sustainability credentials of Northern Ireland Agri-food such as enhanced product quality, reduced supply chain waste, etc
