CASI Platform, Environment pillar: Benchmarking the environmental and climate performance of Canadian Agriculture

By 2050, agri-food systems must produce enough to feed 9 to billion people, while reversing trends of environmental degradation caused in part by agriculture production. This is no small task, and underscores why countless sustainable agriculture standards, certifications, initiatives and platforms have emerged to encourage and measure the impacts of sustainable agriculture practices. While these approaches to encourage, measure and verify sustainability have merit, they can also cause confusion and overwhelm producers and actors along agri-food value chains as they decide what approach best aligns with their sustainability goals and can be integrated within their operation. The Canadian Agri-food Sustainability Initiative (CASI), a one-stop online sustainability platform, aims to mitigate this confusion and duplication, and ensure Canadian producers can effectively record and communicate their performance on sustainability benchmarks. This Accelerate Mitacs Internship will contribute to the development of CASI by conducting an environmental scan that will inform the development of the environmental sustainability pillar, facilitate engagement with key stakeholders, and contributing to the dissemination on the progress of the CASI platform.

Faculty Supervisor:

Ben Bradshaw

Student:

Lisa Ashton

Partner:

Wilton Consulting Group

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Guelph