2025: Measuring carbon footprints in ag/food supply chains and impacts on sustainable trade

This event will be by invitation only

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

- (CET)

This event co-organised by the ForumforAg, GFFPI and OECD on OECD’s report “Measuring carbon footprints in ag/food supply chains & impacts on sustainable trade”.

What would it take to achieve reliable and widespread product carbon footprint information in agri-food supply chains? The OECD report argues that eight building blocks are essential:

Reporting standards and guidelines for carbon footprint measurement, to create a shared understanding of what to include in carbon footprint calculations.

Science-based methods for measuring or estimating emissions.

Farm level calculation tools, which allow farmers to use primary data on their activities and management practices as inputs to calculate their carbon footprint.

Databases with secondary data, to be used where primary data is not (yet) available.

A way of communicating carbon footprint data along the supply chain, so that detailed calculations by producers at one stage of the supply chain can be used as input at the next stage.

A way to ensure the integrity and quality of the data and calculations.

A way to scale up carbon footprint calculations while keeping costs low, to ensure widespread adoption by actors with limited capacity, notably farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and producers in developing countries.

A way to update these elements as new scientific insights and techniques become available.

If these building blocks were in place, actors in the supply chain would be able to receive product carbon footprint information from suppliers, add their own emissions, and share the result with the next stage of the supply chain, all the way to the point where a consumer buys a food product.