This guide applies to Growers. If you are not a grower, you can view our guides for Food & Ingredient Suppliers or Packaging Suppliers instead.
As a grower, your management decisions—from tillage practices to nutrient application—play a critical role in the sustainability profile of the crops you produce. To help capture the value of these efforts, your customers (and your customers' customers) use SupplierConnect.
By sharing your specific field-level data, you ensure that the environmental impact of your harvest is calculated using actual farm practices rather than industry averages. This allows you to get credit for regenerative ag practices or other sustainable farming initiatives, and provides your buyers with the granular data they need for their carbon accounting.
The information you provide goes directly towards calculating a custom Product Carbon Footprint for your ingredients, reflecting your specific practices.
Overview
What is SupplierConnect?
HowGood’s SupplierConnect platform gives you direct access to the world’s largest sustainability database for food ingredients and instantly calculates your product footprints.
Each step is designed to make it easier for you to share sustainability data securely and efficiently - while also gaining insights into your own products.
Sustainability data in the form of product footprints is instantly calculated in-platform using the basic sourcing data you provide. Sharing footprints to your customer is seamless, secure, and can be completed directly in SupplierConnect.
Your proprietary information is always kept confidential - only the calculated footprints (Carbon Footprint and Blue Water Usage) are shared with your customer, and you have access to view and download your carbon and water footprints. The product details you provide are never shared.
Submitted Agricultural Practice Data
How to Submit Your Data
Access Your Inventory: Once you have logged in and see your primary commodities or ingredients, navigate to the ingredient list.
Locate the FieldScope Option: Click the Cog Icon to the left of the specific crop. Look for the option labeled "Submit agricultural practice data."
Note: If this option is grayed out, that specific commodity (e.g., animal proteins or dairy) may not yet be supported by the FieldScope module.
Initialize the Form: Click Submit Agricultural Practice Data. You will be prompted to ensure your basic crop/ingredient data is saved before proceeding to the detailed form.
Complete the Management Tabs: The form is divided into 6 tabs covering essential farm-level metrics.
Mandatory Fields: You must complete the Crop Details (yield, location, etc.) and Farm Settings.
Practice Details: Tabs 3-6 cover inputs like fertilizer types, application rates, tillage methods, and irrigation.
Important: If a field is left blank, the system assumes that the practice or input was not used (e.g., leaving "Fertilizer" blank indicates zero application for that crop cycle).
Review and Submit: Once all tabs are filled, click Submit. Review your entries for accuracy to ensure your practices are reflected correctly.
Confirmation: You will receive a confirmation message stating "Ag Practice Data Received."
Why This Matters for Your Farm
Accurate Representation: Industry averages often fail to capture the nuances of high-performing farms. FieldScope uses the Cool Farm Tool methodology to translate your specific actions into measurable carbon data.
Credit for Stewardship: If you are investing in cover crops, reduced tillage, or optimized nitrogen management, this tool ensures those removals and reductions are accounted for in the final product footprint.
Strengthened Partnerships: Providing high-quality, granular data makes your farm a preferred partner for brands looking to meet strict corporate sustainability and abatement goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if I don’t have data for every field in the form?
If you leave a field blank, the system assumes that the specific input or practice was not used during that growing season. For example, if you leave the "Fertilizer" section empty, the calculation will reflect a crop grown with zero supplemental nutrients. To ensure your impact assessment is accurate, try to provide data for all practices you actually implemented on the ground.
Will submitting my farm data automatically improve the "score" of my crop?
Not necessarily. Using field-level data provides a more accurate footprint, but it doesn’t guarantee a lower one. Research shows a massive variance in impact between different growers of the same crop based on management style. The benefit of FieldScope is that it moves away from generic averages and gives you a baseline based on your actual stewardship, which is the first step in participating in carbon reduction programs.
How is my data being used?
Your data is used to calculate the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and carbon sequestration potential of your specific harvest. This "Farm-to-Gate" footprint is then integrated into your customer's product carbon footprint (PCF). This allows brands to report their Scope 3 emissions more accurately to investors and consumers.
What is the connection between FieldScope and the Cool Farm Tool?
FieldScope is powered by the Cool Farm Tool, a globally recognized methodology for measuring on-farm greenhouse gas emissions. While the Cool Farm Tool helps you understand the impact at the field level, FieldScope acts as the bridge that "translates" your data directly into your buyer's carbon accounting system. This means you only have to provide the data once for it to be recognized across the entire supply chain.
Which specific management areas will I need to report on?
To get the most accurate results, the form asks for data across several key categories:
Fertilizer & Crop Protection: Types and application rates.
Irrigation: Method and total water usage.
Farm Settings: Soil characteristics, country, and local climate.
Energy Use: Fuel types and electricity consumption for farm operations.
Carbon Sequestration: Soil carbon levels and any existing tree biomass.
Does this tool account for carbon sequestration from cover crops or reduced tillage?
Yes. FieldScope is designed to recognize carbon removals. By entering your specific tillage practices and cover cropping history, the model can account for carbon being sequestered in the soil, which can significantly offset the total emissions of the crop.
How should direct suppliers submit on behalf of growers?
If you’re a direct supplier responding on behalf of your growers, you’ll be responsible for submitting the on-farm growing practices for those growers. If all of your growers follow the same practices — for example, using the same types of fertilizers, energy sources, or machinery — you can submit this information once under a single ingredient. In that case, simply aggregate the total growing area and the total supplied volume so the data reflects the full scope of production.
If your growers use different growing practices — such as different fertilizer types or production methods — you’ll need to reflect that variability in your submission. To do so, best practice is add an ingredient to your product within SupplierConnect and submit separate information for each distinct set of growing practices. Alternatively you can follow the aggregation process above, but you will not be able to see the variability within your supply chain.