Cool Farm Tool for Potatoes
After a year working with the Cool Farm Tool, key stakeholders felt that a crop specific tool would be easier for potato growers to relate to and thus easier to complete.
To this end PepsiCo and McCain Foods worked with Dr Jon Hillier (Aberdeen University), Dr Anton Haverkort (Wageningen University, the Netherlands) and ADAS to create a potato specific tool that includes seed production, irrigation, soil treatment, sorting and storage, rather than, for example, threshing and baling. The result is a CFT for potatoes that is simple to use, targeted at the specific needs and inputs of potato growers, and which is scientifically robust. Reference: Haverkort, A.J. and Hillier, J. G. (2011), ‘Cool Farm Tool Potato: model description and performance of four potato production systems’. Potato Research 54: 355-369. It uses primary farm data to produce a report which highlights the specific greenhouse gas hotspots associated with potato production.