TrustBix’s Beef Producer Focus Group: Gathering Insights for Successful 2021 Planning

TrustBIX and Viresco Solutions co-hosted their first Beef Producer Focus Group. The Focus Group aimed to create strategies and actions to address the industry’s increasing demand for farm-level sustainability insights, existing initiatives, and ideas on how to bring more value for producers participating in these programs

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Plans and Expectations

The participants included Alberta cow-calf and feedlot producers. They took part in recent sustainability initiatives, including a survey and a farm-level assessment using the Cool Farm Tool (CFT)* sustainability calculator to quantify their operations greenhouse gas emissions and water and energy use. 

“Moving into 2021, TrustBIX and Viresco will be working with the Cool Farm Alliance to complete the CFT’s beef module modifications for the North American environment, including additional Beta tests with Canadian beef producers”

The desired outcomes from this Focus Group included:

• gathering insights about what value producers see in tracking sustainability on their operation.
• confirming or refuting general perceptions (i.e., are producers looking for more guidance related to quantifying sustainability on their farms).
• understanding what would motivate a producer to do a Cool Farm Tool assessment on a regular (annual) basis, and whether they would apply the results from the assessments to improve the sustainability of their operation. 

In addition, TrustBIX was looking to future Strategic Sourcing Programs development and new ways to bring value to their BIX user-base continually.  

How It Went

The Focus Group took place on the tail-end of an 18-month project undertaken by Viresco Solutions and Alberta Beef Producers (ABP) that involved modifying the Cool Farm Alliance’s widely adopted global sustainability calculator, the Cool Farm Tool, for the North American environment. The adaptations required covered language modifications, versioning updates, methodology changes, and testing.  

Alberta Beef Producers hired a Lakeland College student, Mikayla Flint, to conduct Alpha testing of the modified CFT’s beef module through farm-level sustainability assessments with Alberta beef producers who were willing to volunteer their time and production data (secured and anonymized). In return, they got a sustainability assessment of their farm that includes emissions results, total weight added, daily live weight gain, and emissions per pound of live weight added (in a given period, typically, a year). In addition, all participants will be shown how their operation benchmarked in comparison to other participating operations. 

The two-hour Focus Group opened with identifying the market forces that have stimulated demand for using sustainability calculators as tools for quantifying farm-level sustainability metrics. These market forces include large agri-food brands and retailers using the calculators to report and verify sustainability claims and demonstrate commitment and progress towards International Sustainability Targets. Reasons for agri-food brands and retailers to pursue net-zero emissions include pressure from investors, media, international greenhouse gas commitments, consumer demand, and corporate social responsibility. 

The format for the remainder of the two hours was an open-floor discussion based on the results of a pre-focus group questionnaire centred around the participants’ experiences with the CFT assessment, existing beef marketing programs, and input relating to how the industry can better align all stakeholder interests while increasing the value of verified beef attributes. 

Closing the Event

The last few minutes of the Focus Group were dedicated to TrustBIX demonstrating a high-fidelity mock-up of a future BIX producer dashboard that is integrated with the CFT. This dashboard also has benchmarking capabilities based on BIX programs and sustainability and production data. 

Some of the key takeaways from the Focus Group are the following: 

• The CFT (and other sustainability calculators) provide producers with an opportunity to demonstrate farm-level production impacts and a commitment to continuous improvement.
• Producers want the ability to benchmark the sustainability of their operations, animal performance, and profitability (score in comparison to others). 
• Tools (such as the CFT) that allow better transparency into beef production provide the ability to demonstrate the positive contribution that beef productions have on climate change issues. 
• Messaging on how GHG’s are quantified is extremely important (i.e., Why forage decomposing on the ground is not the same as a cow digesting the forage). 
• The carbon dioxide emissions reductions have little to no value for the producer, but lots of value for large Agri-Food retailers. If the economy is changing to establish a value for that carbon, it is valuable for the producer to be conscious of the steps taken to reduce emissions.
• There needs to be a direct value or direct incentive attached to it (new assessments), or producers do not have the time or resources to dedicate towards additional reporting / administrative (sustainability) activities. 
• Science-backed tools to show how numbers (emissions) are being quantified are needed to create valid arguments for the decrease in taxation (carbon credits, the threat of global meat taxes). The more tools we have to tangibly demonstrate (beef production’s) real impact, the better. 
• There needs to be a focus on net carbon emissions (farm-level carbon sequestration activities considered). 

Moving into 2021, TrustBIX and Viresco will be working with the Cool Farm Alliance to complete the CFT’s beef module modifications for the North American environment, including additional Beta tests with Canadian beef producers. TrustBIX will be integrating with the Cool Farm Tool and updating their BIX user dashboards to reflect producer CFT assessment data and benchmarking capabilities.