In January of 2009, the partners of Cirrus made the decision to participate in the broad stake-holder process called SISC which is seeking to define outcome-based metrics to measure the sustainability of specialty crop production. This is a goal which is certainly ambitious, but potentially quite valuable if done well.  We have devoted a substantial amount of time to that effort as a way to give back to the grower community – Our ultimate customers. We have sought to make constructive contributions to the process for three of the metrics

• The On-Farm Greenhouse Gas Metric
• The On-Farm Water Use Metric
• The On-Farm Pesticide Metric

Based on many years of experience in these areas we believe that we can provide useful input and perspective for this process.  We believe that to a large extent, modern agricultural technologies used wisely by growers, enable sustainable farming.  We believe that objective, scientifically sound metrics are the best way to continue the decades of sustainability progress that farmers have already made and to address the challenges moving forward. (In the interest of full disclosure, our activity with SISC is not on behalf of any client nor is it compensated).