Fieldprint Calculator: A Measurement of Agricultural Sustainability in the Texas High Plains

Sustainability of agricultural production is becoming a significant issue with regard to the marketing of agricultural products.  Recently, Bayer CropScience announced their e³ Sustainable Cotton Program which encourages sustainable production practices to add value to cotton produced in a sustainable manner. The Fieldprint Calculator is a tool—designed by Field to Market, the Keystone Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture—that aids in encouraging sustainable production practices by allowing producers to evaluate themselves and determine the sustainability level of their farming practices that they may change and improve those practices in the future. When producer data is input into the calculator, it allows for the estimation of the environmental footprint of a crop production system. This footprint is based on seven evaluation metrics—land use, soil conservation, soil carbon, irrigation water use, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water quality—which are to be used by producers to determine in which areas they are efficient or need to improve upon in order to produce as sustainably as possible.

 The Fieldprint Calculator was used in a pilot program sponsored by the National Cotton Council to measure sustainability of cotton production on sites in the Texas Alliance for Water Conservation (TAWC) project in the Texas High Plains region.  The availability of six years (2007-2012) of input and production data allowed for the comparison of those seven economic and environmental performance-based production metrics for specific fields across time. The results of this data will show whether or not producers have been decreasing the size of their environmental footprint over the last six years. Questions to be addressed based on the analysis of the data are whether or not the most sustainable fields have also been the most profitable, and if not, what kind of incentive is there for producers to attempt more sustainable practices.