After several years in the making, a beta version of the National Environmental Sustainability Tool was recently released by Egg Farmers in Canada. This innovative online system is designed to help Canadian egg producers measure, monitor and manage the environmental footprint of their farms. By completing a ‘sustainability assessment’ at NEST, egg producers will be able to better understand the key drivers of their farm’s environmental performance (such as energy and water use), as well as their relationship with farms locally and nationally. A comparison can also be considered.
Tim Lambert, CEO of Egg Farmers of Canada, said over the past 50 years, Canadian egg production has already made great strides in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and water, land and energy use. I’m here. Now NEST enables egg farmers to go even further.
Create an action plan
NEST gives egg farmers access to the latest agricultural sustainability research, allowing them to create action plans, set sustainability goals, track progress on their farms, and more.
Dr. Nathan Pelletier, EFC Research Chair on Sustainability at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, added that his team worked with the EFC to develop NEST, and that future versions of NEST will focus on energy, feed and water use. , and other farm performance attributes collected by automated digital barn and farm management systems on Canadian poultry farms, and farm operating parameters and conditions.
NEST anonymously aggregates producer-provided data to ensure confidentiality and enable egg producers to see where they fit into a broad range of sustainability performance across the sector.Offered by both Lambert and Peltier poultry world Learn more about NEST here.
What is the range of specific sustainability metrics that can be measured and compared within the tool?
Pelletier: “This first version of NEST will focus on hen productivity, feed use (e.g. feed conversion rate), water use, energy use (e.g. diesel, natural gas, solar, etc.) and fertilizer. Management: The next release of NEST will support the measurement of farm-specific environmental footprints, such as carbon footprint, and provide the ability to estimate the footprint reductions that can be achieved by adopting farm-appropriate green technologies. increase.”
Please tell us about the sustainability evaluation system.
Peltier: “It consists of 28 questions that give a complete picture of the flock about the amount and type of energy used per flock, the type of insulation in the pen, the type of lighting used, the type of fertilizer. Ask the egg farmer to provide cycle measurements: water storage, amount of water used, etc. Once all the data is entered, the farmer will see how the measurements match up with other farms. and access information to improve these results.
They are given evaluation results and a scorecard that shows how their farms compare nationally and regionally. From there, using NEST’s Action Plans feature, egg producers can set specific goals for feed consumption, water, energy use, and more. Egg farmers can either identify their own targets or follow recommended research-based targets determined based on the results of specific sustainability assessments, and in either case they can improve their farms to a higher level of sustainability. can lead to possibilities. ”
You said NEST allows egg producers to stay at the forefront of implementing green technology and innovation. Why?
Pelletier: “Green technologies continue to emerge and evolve, and it is often difficult to know which technology makes the most environmental and economic sense for a particular farm. , when choosing renewable energy systems such as wind and solar power plants, the local availability of renewable energy sources, the benefits of replacing electricity from the local grid (varies greatly by state) , installation and maintenance costs, and the availability of certain incentives or rebates.At NEST, we aim to make these decisions easier by giving farmers the information they need.”
What are the anonymous aggregates of information collected by NEST used for, other than reporting to the public?
Pelletier: “In addition to providing current and representative benchmarks for egg producers, the data collected through NEST is also used to monitor how the industry is evolving over time. This enables EFC to report on trends within the industry and position Canadian eggs in the protein source market based on sustainability attributes.The data will inform targeted sustainability improvements across the industry. It can also be used to potentially develop programs and initiatives to support NEST.As more poultry farmers use NEST and contribute data to the aggregated data pool, this expanded data set will It also opens opportunities to use advanced machine learning and predictive analytics techniques to identify key technologies and management practices that support more sustainable outcomes.”
What understanding do you expect in terms of participation? How do you encourage it?
Lambert: “For egg producers, we expect NEST to be easy to use and provide important sustainability information. We are working with NEST to inform farmers at the local level about NEST.Participants ensure that the data collected by NEST is always anonymous.”
What about future versions of NEST?
Pelletier: “The first full version of NEST, called Full NEST, will allow farms to identify which systems are best suited for their environment (e.g. to reduce their carbon footprint). Subsequent versions of NEST will , costs and other information will be consolidated to enable egg producers to make more informed choices.
“In the short term, NEST will include information on both renewable energy systems and systems that convert fertilizer waste into energy, but later versions will include fertilizer pelletization, pyrolysis, passive and active geothermal It also includes information on new technologies such as both systems for heating and cooling barns.More specifically, future versions of NEST will include region- and farm-specific information on costs and economic payback times for certain green technology systems. An estimate of the environmental Regarding sustainability benefits.
“Future versions of this tool will also integrate animal welfare data, so farmers will be able to analyze data specific to their housing system for a range of key welfare indicators, such as foot and feather condition, disease incidence and mortality. can be benchmarked against the performance of
NEST is now available to all registered Canadian egg producers who have access to the tool at eggsustainability.ca. To learn more about Egg Farmers of Canada’s commitment and focus on sustainability, read the organization’s first sustainability report.
