Strengthening the sustainability of Rubus berry production

In a mission to develop a long-term sustainability program for the Rubus berry industry, Hort Innovation and Lifecycles are embarking on a life cycle assessment (LCA) project aimed at generating comprehensive information and metrics about the environmental performance of raspberry and blackberry production in Australia.

Acknowledging the growing demand from both government bodies and industry stakeholders for heightened transparency on environmental issues, the project aims to generate information that can inform a sustainability strategy and enable clear communication of the industry’s environmental credentials to consumers and regulators.

The primary objective of the LCA study is to generate baseline and benchmark metrics for the Rubus industry’s carbon footprint and water footprint. This will give growers and industry associations an understanding of the scale, significance and sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and potential water use impacts. By doing so, the industry can identify potential risks, address data gaps, explore opportunities for reducing environmental footprints, and construct positive environmental narratives for the industry. This can feed into a sustainability strategy, via a workshop to be conducted as part of the project.

The LCA studies will be conducted at two scales — for individual businesses and at an industry scale. The individual business case studies will take a deep dive into different production typologies and consider feasible environmental improvement initiatives. The industry-scale LCA will have a broader perspective by collecting a larger sample of data by survey to generate environmental metrics representing industry averages, a baseline and benchmarks.

In essence, the project equips the Rubus berry industry with information, metrics and resources for informing their sustainability strategy and decision-making about environmental improvements, and helping growers respond to future requests from supply chain partners for information about environmental credentials.

This project has been funded by Hort Innovation, using the raspberry and blackberry research and development levy and contributions from the Australian Government.

For more information, visit here.

Image credit: iStock.com/svf74