UBC Okanagan researchers and Canadian egg farmers have created a practical tool to help producers balance environmental and economic trade-offs.
Researchers at UBC Okanagan and Canadian egg farmers have built a practical decision-making tool to help producers balance environmental, economic and management trade-offs on their farms.
The project developed software that brings together key sustainability indicators in one place to help farmers establish benchmarks for their farms, compare options and understand the consequences of different green technology adoption and management choices.
“Too often, sustainability tools work in theory but fail in practice, or lack buy-in from their intended audience,” says Dr. Vivek Arulnathan, an alumnus from UBCO’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program. “By involving farmers throughout the design process, we built something that reflects how decisions are actually made on farms.”
Farmers were involved throughout the process, shaping what information mattered, how it was presented and how it could be used to inform operations on the ground.
The study, published in Sustainability, was led by Dr. Arulnathan, a researcher with UBCO’s Food Systems Priority Research for Integrated Sustainability Management Lab, alongside Dr. Eric Li from the Faculty of Management and Dr. Nathan Pelletier, an associate professor of sustainable food systems at UBC Okanagan.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE: UBC Okanagan News