Welcoming the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) to GLOBALG.A.P. Community Membership!

About SISC

The Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) is a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to developing tools for measuring performance of regenerative and sustainable practices across specialty crop (all fruit, nut, and vegetable) supply chains.  

SISC offers a suite of science-driven and outcome-focused metrics enabling operators to benchmark, compare, and communicate their own performance. The full list of the nine version 1.0 working metrics are published on their website. 

Topics span a range of operations, including water, biodiversity, energy, soil, nitrogen and phosphorus use, and food loss. 

Tools for the industry 

SISC offers a cloud-based Stewardship Calculator, a producer friendly assessment framework that empowers brands, retailers, suppliers, and farmers to measure the environmental impacts of specialty crop production and identify opportunities for continuous improvement. Use of the calculator is free for growers and data is kept confidential. 

In addition, SISC grants full access to all its metrics to software companies who are members of SISC. Any software company is welcome to join SISC and incorporate SISC metrics into their own platforms.  

Working toward a shared goal: Supporting producers in practicing safe and responsible agriculture 

GLOBALG.A.P. and SISC support producers in their journey of continual improvement by providing region-specific guidelines and certification solutions that simplify and streamline the process of meeting agricultural standards. 

“SISC’s members – including producer groups, brands, buyers, and environmental NGO’s – are thrilled to align with GLOBALG.A.P. to help specialty crop growers ‘measure to manage’ and work towards continual improvement on environmental outcomes,” commented Alison Edwards, the Executive Director of SISC.   

“SISC’s metrics are developed with growers, with a focus on making them helpful as a management tool, as well as a single way to report improvements with supply chain partners. SISC’s mission to create and support a single yardstick for the entire industry to measure sustainability in one way, and reduce reporting redundancy for growers, is advanced with GLOBALG.A.P.’s new United States national interpretation guideline for Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) version 6 GFS for fruit and vegetables.” 

President of GLOBALG.A.P. North America, Roberta Anderson, stated: “We are delighted to welcome SISC as a GLOBALG.A.P. Community Member. Tools like the SISC calculator help producers connect what they are already doing to what is needed for GLOBALG.A.P. certification and broader sustainability goals." 

Related links 

• Learn more about the activities of the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC) 

• Read about the publication of the US national interpretation guideline for IFA v6 GFS for fruit and vegetables 

• Understand national interpretation guidelines in the GLOBALG.A.P. system