Guiding Indoor Agriculture Toward a Sustainable Future: The First Comprehensive Framework for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Tom Stenzel
Executive Director, Controlled Environment Agriculture Alliance
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) provides growers much greater ability to control multiple variables in production of crops, thus enhancing overall efficiency, quality, freshness and sustainability. This precision allows for year-round cultivation of crops, increased crop yields with the least environmental impact, and reduced use of water, land and other scarce resources.
After a year of development by CEA Alliance member growers and business partners, and discussion with outside stakeholders, the Alliance has released the industry’s first sustainability framework developed by indoor growers, for indoor growers. We believe the Sustainability Framework for Controlled Environment Agriculture will drive credibility, transparency and continuous improvement through standardized approaches for sustainability measurement, guiding indoor growers through both key impacts to measure and metrics for measuring them.
Metrics For Supporting the CEA Industry
The new framework features 60 metrics supporting 20 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across a variety of environmental and social aspects of indoor growing, including natural resource and climate impacts, pesticide use, waste generation, food safety, employment practices, community engagement, and food security impacts.
Within CEA farms, growers’ heightened control enables more comprehensive measurement of these key impact areas for sustainability, including carbon, water use, nutrient use efficiency and discharge, food loss and other attributes that are difficult to measure in field production. The ability to measure, optimize and improve impacts are a critical part of indoor agriculture’s value proposition for consumers, communities, the environment, and a more sustainable future for the food system overall.
A Tool for Indoor Growers to Communicate Environmental Impacts
The CEA Alliance Sustainability Framework can be used by indoor growers as a data-driven way to assess and communicate key impacts that are material to indoor growers and broader ESG stakeholders, identify opportunities for improvement, and measure progress over time. Given the diverse and evolving nature of the innovative CEA industry, the framework was designed to be simple, inclusive, flexible and outcomes based, so any producer at any stage of growth or type of system can apply it to where they are on their sustainability journey.
A Breakdown of the Various KPIs and Metrics
The core of the framework is a detailed summary table that lists various KPIs and metrics categorized under environmental and social impacts. For environmental metrics, the focus areas include land use (productivity/yield and ecosystem impacts), air quality (climate/GHGs and non-GHG air emissions), energy use, water use, water quality, nutrient management, pesticides, waste (food loss and solid waste), and packaging. Each metric includes considerations for calculation approaches and boundaries, emphasizing the need for clear methodologies and third-party verification where applicable.
Social metrics cover aspects such as food safety, economic impact and job creation, community and economic inclusion, food security, and access to fresh and healthy foods. Employment practices, compensation, and benefits are also detailed, highlighting the need for fair wages, ethical recruitment, and diversity policies. Worker safety metrics include recordable incident rates and safety culture descriptions.
In Conclusion
The framework provides a list of resources that offer guidance on sustainability metrics, emphasizing the need for continuous development of robust methodologies and tools.
The “Sustainability Framework for Controlled Environment Agriculture” serves as a foundational document to guide CEA producers in adopting and reporting sustainable practices. By providing a structured approach to KPIs and metrics, it aims to enhance the overall sustainability and efficiency of the CEA industry.
About the CEA Alliance
The Controlled Environment Agriculture Alliance (CEA Alliance) is a membership trade association representing and serving vertical farms and greenhouse producers growing fruits and vegetables in a highly controlled indoor production environment. Controlled environment growers employ a variety of agricultural production methods and technology to create optimal growing conditions with rigorous environmental controls. Growers utilize innovative technologies such as hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, and soil-based systems to grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.
Readers can download the Sustainability Framework for Controlled Environment Agriculture at www.ceaalliance.com
For more information, please contact Tom Stenzel, Executive Director, at Tom@CEAAlliance.com.
