Purpose
To be able to use the combined data available about land use, crop cultivation, inputs and soil health (from Soil Health V1 and Soil Health V2) to be able to estimate greenhouse gas emissions at the farm level.
Stakeholders
Hannah Wittman
Sean Smukler
Khanh Dao Duc
Grants involved
ScotiaBank
RBC
OSC4
Hannah’s new new frontiers
Release window
FY2026
Scope
Epic | User story | Additional context |
|---|---|---|
Augment the data model and UI to support any gaps in the necessary inputs for generating a HOLOS output | ||
Build HOLOS model | As a FO / FM I want to be able to generate an estimate of my green house gas emissions (GHG) and changes in soil carbon (IC) so that I can understand the sustainability of my farm | HOLOS is primarily a Canadian research tool. The current vision is that we would code the HOLOS model into LiteFarm and that it would be the lowest barrier, back of the envelop choice for understanding on farm GHG and IC. |
Augment the data model and UI to support any gaps in the necessary inputs for generating a COMET-Farm output | ||
Integrate with COMET-Farm | ||
Augment the data model and UI to support any gaps in the necessary inputs for generating a CFT output | ||
Integrate with Cool Farm Tool |
Things to be investigated
Question | Answer | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Which of our users will benefit most greatly from generating GHG estimations for their farms? | This can be an input into which tools we support / integrate with. | |
Should we be charging for the ability to generate GHG emissions if a farmer will realize a monetary benefit from doing so? | We would probably need to provide a seamless service where the user just agreed to pushing the data and we would handle the remainder of the transaction and take a cut. Alternatively, we could just inform farmers of programs in the regions that would pay them for their reports. In this case we could build a “Tip LiteFarm” link for them to share the wealth. | |
Which of these tools should we use to estimate on farm GHG emission estimates? | Each has a geographic footprint:
So the answer may be more than one. | |
Does it make more sense to build and maintain a Switchboard connector to integrate with COMET farm tool and Cool Farm Tool or to create direct integrations? |
Additional resources
The team has performed a thorough analysis of the three leading GHG accounting tools on the market – HOLOS, COMET-Farm, and Cool Farm Tool:
...
The current vision for LiteFarm users is that the HOLOS inspired code will be available in-app and will continually re-evaluate GHG emissions as users enter relevant data into the system. COMET-Farm and Cool Farm Tool are both available through APIs that allow management practice data to be sent over the internet and GHG estimates to be returned. Users will be able to request GHG estimates from these services directly in LiteFarm and the generated reports will be pushed via notification once prepared. Our intent is to provide these reports to users free of charge, but that may not be possible depending on pricing conversations with the Cool Farm Tool team.
Tools to investigate (non-exhaustive)
Cool Farm Tool (https://coolfarmtool.org/ )
CometFarm (https://comet-farm.com/ )
HOLOS (https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agricultural-production/holos-software-program )
Farm Carbon Calculator (https://calculator.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/ )
Greenhouse Accounting Frameworks (GAF) for Australian Primary Industries (https://piccc.org.au/resources/Tools.html )
Other resources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825223001514?via%3Dihub