Great news, the McDonald’s ‘What If?’ Tool has reached 10,000 hits
E-CO2 has been managing the McDonald’s Sustainable Beef Club within the Farm Forward programme since its launch in spring 2010. Farm Forward was initiated to help create a sustainable future for British and Irish farming. The beef club aims to help beef farmers find and share ways to make changes to their working practices so they can drive greater efficiencies on their farms.
As part of Farm Forward, E-CO2 is running sustainability assessments and group workshops, offered freely to over 200 farms from seven abattoirs that, together make up the Sustainable Beef Club across Britain and Ireland.
E-CO2 released the first version of the ‘What If?’ Tool in March 2013. This tool has enabled farmers to measure the carbon emissions produced per kilo of beef and benchmark their score against the top performing farms in their sector. The tool is freely available and can be accessed providing you are connected to the internet.
The second version of the tool was released in January 2014. It fulfils a lot of the same functions as the previous tool but with enhanced features that include the calculation of the financial impact from implementing management changes, which may have the potential to increase farm profits through better utilisation of farm resources such as feed and fertiliser. This is presented clearly and concisely to the user in the form of net financial benefit, impact per kilo of beef sold and impact per finisher sold. An example of how one suckler producer is using the tool is available here as profiled in the Farmers Guardian in June this year.
The tool has had a total of 10,526 page views to date with 58% of these views from returning visitors. The site has also been successful internationally having had views from 40 countries around the world including: Switzerland, USA, Australia and France.
Moving forward, E-CO2 hopes to further develop the tool by adding additional topical elements. There are plans to encourage increased use by farmers on a global scale meaning the service could benefit beef farmers and McDonald’s suppliers all over the world.
