Measuring Sustainability

To document continous improvement, the Pork Checkoff offers an on-farm sustainability assessment. “You can’t improve without measuring things, right?” asked Dale Stevermer, who is a pork producer from Easton, Minnesota and a member of the National Pork Board. “When we look at our overall carbon footprint as pork producers, the bucket is about 60 percent feedstuffs, essentially corn and soybean meal; another 18-to-20 percent is in our manure storage and handling.” The sustainability report utilizes a third-party to verify data and measure sustainability improvements. The data may also offer opportunity for the new carbon markets.