Syngenta, a Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform) member, announces the release of the Sustainable Outcomes in Agriculture (SOA) standard enabled through its Cropwise Sustainability app, a one-of-its-kind tool that places farm sustainability insights into the hands of growers. The platform, available for free download for U.S. farmers in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, empowers farmers and the broader agriculture value chain to demonstrate sustainability and identify opportunities for continuous improvement, ensuring alignment with the objectives of the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA).
By incorporating Syngenta’s SOA standard, known as the Standard, the Cropwise Sustainability app provides an actionable approach to measure and deliver continuous improvements for regenerative agriculture at scale. The Standard has achieved Gold-level equivalency against SAI Platform’s FSA 3.0, the highest level of equivalency.
“By accelerating innovation in the digital ag space, Syngenta is the first agriculture input provider to launch a standard and to receive FSA 3.0 gold-equivalency,” said Joe Iveson, FSA Manager at SAI Platform. “Through this benchmark, Cropwise Sustainability helps farmers — and by extension retailers and consumer packaged goods companies — better understand and take incremental steps forward on their sustainability journey.”
The Standard is an easy-to-use and accurate program that allows growers and value chain stakeholders to measure, track progress and implement initiatives, supported by the Cropwise Sustainability app. Users are prompted to answer questions about their farm production practices and decisions, and receive a leadership score and performance report based on sustainable outcomes. Opportunities for improvement are identified, alongside actionable sustainability insights that can be considered in the planning process and from season to season.
“Cropwise Sustainability brings together Syngenta, growers, and the industry through step-change improvements in digital ag, data and analytics to support climate resiliency,” said Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta Group. “By helping farmers measure, benchmark and maximize the impact of regenerative agriculture practices, growers can strengthen their sustainable productivity, operations and outcomes.”
Through Syngenta’s data privacy pledge, growers maintain ownership of their data. Growers can choose to share their assessment results with value chain partners. Partners are then able to anonymize aggregated data based off of assessments, providing a view of their sourcing area and where opportunities for sustainability improvements exist.
“Sustainability assessments do not have to be a time-intensive process, users who leverage Cropwise Sustainability typically complete a 20-30-minute farm assessment and receive immediate results,” said Liz Hunt, sustainable and responsible business head at Syngenta. “The insights are compiled in an intuitive, digital dashboard that tracks progress in areas such as crop production, water impact, soil health, biodiversity and habitat, human and animal well-being, and community leadership. Growers also have the unique option to view their results and benchmark against other app users in their area.”
