Tracking data to drive a low-emission future in food systems

By: Georgina Smith

Our global food supply is a complex web. It straddles a diverse array of activities, from growing crops and harvesting them, to transporting packaged foods to supermarket shelves and everything in between. Collecting data across the food value chain from start to finish, for every food product made in every country, is a task so daunting that so far, it has not been done.  

Land use change is another source of harmful emissions, driving biodiversity loss and further exacerbating climate impacts, especially in biodiversity rich countries such as Indonesia, Democratic Republic of Congo or Bolivia.  

Yet agriculture is essential for human and animal food and nutritional security. It is also critical to millions of livelihoods around the world; an important pathway out of poverty, and a source of socioeconomic stability. As nations struggle with inadequate food system data related to emissions, and without reliable information, setting intervention priorities and tracking progress towards emissions targets remains difficult.  

The challenge to change  

If appropriately managed, agriculture and agri-food systems can also be part of climate solution providing cost-effective mitigation measures. The CGIAR initiative on Low-Emission Food Systems (MITIGATE+), aims to tackle food system challenges head-on, by providing civil society, governments, academia, and the private sector in targeted regions with data, evidence, and information to integrate low-emission practices into food systems. 

“We are working to increase rigor and certainty in data, knowledge, tools, and capacity to improve food system emission accounting, quantification of mitigation potential, and monitoring the progress over time,” explains Tek Sapkota, who leads the Climate Change Science Group within CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems program. 

“The aim is to provide tools that empower governments and others across the food value-chain, to set realistic mitigation targets. This data will also facilitate transparency, so that more reliable contributions can be made to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process.”  

Such data can also equip governments or businesses with options to address multiple development tradeoffs. For example, while efforts are underway to make zero-deforestation coffee available in global coffee shops in response to consumer pressure, domestic actions may be underfunded. Domestic policies may also support the private sector’s pursuit of short-term profits at the expense of long-term food system sustainability.  

Tools to better track emissions in food systems  

This process also focuses on supporting more accurate inventory accounting, target-setting, and verification of results for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) among countries to support the Global Stocktake. To increase rigor and certainty in data, knowledge, tools and capacity to improve food system GHG monitoring, the team conducted a thorough analysis of NDCs for China, Colombia, Kenya, and Vietnam.  

A bottom-up approach integrated a mix of Tier1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 inventory methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The comprehensive review synthesized the scientific basis, data, and analytics behind NDC targets, and identified missing data gaps, suggesting additional mitigation options to update country NDCs and reduce GHG emissions in food systems.  

In Viet Nam, the team worked alongside the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and partners to implement the Rice Activity Monitoring and Reporting (RiceMoRe) system. This is a digital data platform that standardizes and records time-series data on rice production activities and the adoption of low-emission practices. The system, being piloted among partners in the Mekong River Delta and Red River Delta regions, collects consistent data from communal to national level, to track rice production across geographic locations and record near-real-time data for informed decision-making.  

In China, the team partnered with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences to quantify the carbon footprint and economic performance of milk production. In Kenya, a Tier-2 approach for methane emissions from dairy livestock is being developed. And in Colombia, a Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) protocol is being tested with the government and partners to track deforestation associated with agricultural supply chains to enhance the national GHG inventory, contributing to the country’s “Zero Deforestation Agreements.”  

Such examples aim to equip governments, civil society and private sector partners with the information they need to make better decisions. In the long run, such capacity support can be a strong foundation upon which to build and track improved GHG inventories globally, to inform planning, tracking and reporting of emissions. And importantly, to understand and prioritize interventions that can be most effective in tackling them.