Creating and Demonstrating Conservation Public Goods and Private Benefits through Performance Metrics in the California Specialty Crop Sector

SISC metrics are a tool to capture and communicate data about the real impacts of improved on-farm stewardship in a way that works for the entire supply chain. Currently, food industry supply chains are not designed to use a tool like this. Communication of this stewardship data, and the benefits created by it, must come into play throughout supply chains in order to
catalyze market forces to reward continually improved conservation practice on the farm level. In this CIG project, SISC proposes to design, implement, and test an innovative model that support appropriate metric use up and down supply chains. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate the use of performance metrics-to make them easier to implement-so they become widely used as tools for continuous improvement, to address and relieve regulatory burdens, and ideally to capture the rewards that markets may deliver for improved conservation practices.