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In 2019, the Floriculture Sustainability Initiative (FSI) announced a new environmental scope for their “Basket of Standards” that encourages producers to achieve standardized record keeping on key inputs in the future. A keen supporter of sustainability measures in the global floriculture industry, GLOBALG.A.P. welcomed the new data-driven environmental criteria announced by the FSI last year. As a market emerges for certifications that fulfill these criteria, a new GLOBALG.A.P. add-on is on the horizon: the Impact-Driven Approach to Sustainability. 

Industry requirements call for innovative solutions 

Founded in 2012, the FSI is a multi-stakeholder initiative that brings together members of the international floriculture supply chain to improve practices and drive positive change toward the sustainable production of flowers and plants. The FSI offers their “Basket of Standards” to meet this goal. Certification standards for floriculture are benchmarked according to a minimum level of compliance. Standards that achieve this benchmarked level are then displayed in the basketfor producers and retailers to choose from.  

GLOBALG.A.P.’s Integrated Farm Assurance standard for Flowers and Ornamentals is already the chosen standard for FSI benchmarking of good agricultural practices (agricultural scope). Last year, the FSI announced an environmental scope to join the existing agricultural and social scopes. This new scope features criteria that require the digital registration of input consumption data, including water and energy usage and fertilizers. In order to meet this requirement, GLOBALG.A.P. is collaborating with farm management system providers to offer a new add-on. 

Collaboration with farm management systems 

The Impact-Driven Approach to Sustainability add-on links to existing farm management systems to collect environmental farm data at producer level. By linking with existing farm management systems via an interface, GLOBALG.A.P. offers producers a choice of compatible system providers on the open market. GLOBALG.A.P. then processes the data and provides feedback reports for all producers using the add-on.

Stay tuned

The GLOBALG.A.P. Impact-Driven Approach to Sustainability add-on will be ready for producers later this month. In the meantime, producers and farm management system providers can visit our website to find out more about what an Impact-Driven Approach to GLOBALG.A.P. standards means for the future.