Category: Back to the Planet

Project title: Almondco Orchard Efficiency & Benchmarking Program (2025–): Primary Data to Improve Water, Carbon and On-Farm Efficiency

Project type: Business Implementation or Operational Initiative

Relevant SDG(s):

• Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
• Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
• Goal 13: Climate Action
• Goal 15: Life on Land

Primary topic(s):

• Digital Solutions for Sustainability
• Net Zero Strategies and Scope 3 Emissions
• Water Stewardship and Management
• Climate Resilience and Adaptation
• Supply Chain Transparency and Traceability

Relevant product(s): Almonds

Project end date: Ongoing

Duration: 1 year, not limited

Location: Australia

Is this a multi-collaborative project? Yes.Almondco sustainability and grower relations teams, participating Almondco growers, and specialist external support (consultants – 2XE) for emissions-accounting methodologies and data systems (as required). The program is delivered within a cooperative model to ensure grower value and confidentiality.

ABSTRACT:

Almondco Australia Limited is a grower-owned almond cooperative based in Australia. In 2025, Almondco launched the Orchard Efficiency & Benchmarking Program to help our organisation and our growers strengthen environmental performance while maintaining profitability and supply reliability. The program was designed around a simple idea: you can’t improve what you don’t measure, and the Australian Almond industry’s next step-change in sustainability will depend on credible, farm-level data that is useful to growers, not just compliance reporting.

The program establishes a consistent, secure method via the Almondco Grower Portal, for collecting primary on-farm activity data across key sustainability drivers: fuel and electricity use, fertiliser and nutrient inputs, irrigation water use, crop protection chemistry, pollination inputs, land-use change indicators, biodiversity/groundcover practices, and core operational context such as bearing hectares, yield and tree age. Almondco’s grower questionnaire clearly communicates confidentiality and data security, data is only accessible to the grower and selected Almondco staff and is protected via encryption to prevent unauthorised access. This is essential in a cooperative setting where trust and participation determine the scale and quality of outcomes. A practical barrier for farm benchmarking is the effort required to assemble data across multiple systems. To address this, Almondco developed a Data Input Guide and hands-on support model that shows growers where to find the required information (e.g., fuel portals, electricity retailers, fertiliser invoices, water authority billing, contractor reports). The guide explains the program purpose: to give growers insights into their own performance while benchmarking it against others within the cooperative, and to support Almondco’s ability to meet emerging carbon reporting requirements (ISSB standards S1 & S2) within the supply chain. This approach reduces friction, improves data completeness, and makes participation achievable for farms with different record-keeping maturity.

The program’s core “value back to growers” is delivered through a concise benchmark report that compares each participating orchard’s performance against regional and Almondco averages using intuitive intensity metrics (per hectare and per tonne of kernel). For example, the report format highlights where a grower may be higher on a per-hectare basis but more efficient per tonne once yield is considered—helping focus decisions on the most meaningful levers. The report structure covers water, energy, nutrients, chemical spend, labour, and emissions, pairing charts with plain-English commentary so that the output is usable for operational decision-making, budgeting, and continuous improvement, we wanted a usable operational report, not just a sustainability document.

From the outset, Almondco embedded climate action into the benchmarking design. The report includes an emissions intensity view and explains the dominant contributors, enabling growers to target improvement actions that both cut cost and reduce emissions. In the current report format, electricity, nitrogen fertiliser and diesel are shown as the common key emissions contributors, with guidance that maintaining yield and improving efficiency in the respective areas are practical levers over time. This aligns with SDG 13 (Climate Action) while remaining grounded in farm realities.

In 2025, Almondco completed the pilot data intake stage covering 4,800 hectares across 11 farms, following an initial engagement pool where some growers withdrew for varying reasons. This pilot represents approximately 35% of Almondco’s grower area, demonstrating that meaningful scale is achievable when data is secure, the ask is clear, and the output provides genuine value. Building on this, Almondco has a 2026 commitment target of 50% participation, which will materially increase representativeness, allow stronger benchmarking signals, and accelerate industry-ready primary data coverage across water, energy and carbon.

Overall, the Orchard Efficiency & Benchmarking Program is a practical, scalable “back to the planet” initiative that integrates water stewardship, climate action, responsible production, and nature stewardship into one coherent grower-facing system. It strengthens grower decision-making, improves supply chain transparency, and positions Almondco to meet evolving sustainability expectations with credible, farm-level evidence.

OBJECTIVES:

The objectives were to:

• Provide growers with clear, confidential insights into orchard performance and efficiency using comparable intensity metrics.
• Support continuous improvement in water, energy and input use while protecting productivity;
• Create an at-scale, primary-data foundation for Almondco’s supply-chain sustainability and Scope 3 preparedness
• Strengthen grower engagement through practical support tools and benchmark reports that are concise and decision-useful

IMPACT AND OUTCOMES:

The Orchard Efficiency & Benchmarking Program has created impacts at two levels: on-farm decision-making and cooperative-level strategic planning and insight. At the grower level, the most immediate outcome has been the “uh-huh moment” effect: when growers see their own inputs, yields, and intensity metrics laid out clearly, practices that previously felt “about right” become measurable and therefore challengeable. This has prompted more structured reflection such as: “Am I actually getting value for money from that input or practice?” In practical terms, the benchmark outputs have helped shift conversations from anecdotal impressions to evidence-based decisions about irrigation management, nutrient strategy, energy use, and operational settings. Where a grower may have assumed they were efficient because a practice was long-standing or common in their area, the report format enables a direct comparison against peers and regional averages, which makes opportunities for refinement visible and actionable.

A key outcome is that benchmarking creates permission to change. In agriculture, practice is often reinforced by habit, inherited knowledge, and local norms. Putting numbers “on paper” in a consistent way helps growers separate tradition from performance. This doesn’t mean pushing a single “best practice” solution; rather, it enables growers to ask sharper questions: Which inputs are genuinely driving yield and quality? Which are simply increasing cost (and emissions) without clear return? What’s the lowest-risk improvement path? That questioning mindset is itself a meaningful outcome, because it increases the likelihood that efficiency improvements will be sustained beyond one season.

At the cooperative level, the program has delivered a new capability with a major impact, that is the program has strengthened Almondco’s Scope 3 preparedness using primary, orchard-level data (rather than a third party international spend based emission factor). From the data received from 11 farms, Almondco calculated a combined delivered yield of 12,936,318.82 kg and combined emissions of 25,674 tCO₂-e, equating to an average emissions intensity of 1.98 kgCO₂-e/kg kernel (with variation across farms and a slightly higher number than expected due to lower than expected yields attributed to low crack outs). This matters because it provides a credible, participant-based emissions rate that can be compared against previously used generic factors and will inform how Almondco builds its Scope 3 “data bank” for emerging reporting expectations. It also highlights where differences occur between farms and regions, reinforcing that emissions intensity is not one single number across a supply base, there are identifiable drivers and improvement opportunities. Almondco has long term aspirations to achieve net zero across all 3 scopes inline with international pathways, and this supply chain level facilitation of measurement for our growers is a key first step.

Almondco can now also make generalised conclusions across key growing regions using a consistent dataset. With participation reaching 4,800 hectares (about 35% of Almondco’s grower area) in 2025 and a commitment to 50% participation in 2026, Almondco has reached the point where regional patterns start to emerge with enough confidence to support planning and targeted engagement. Rather than relying on assumptions about climate and agronomy, Almondco can now quantify the way different regions operate in reality: for example, some regions may use less water and energy but show higher reliance on certain other inputs, while other regions show the opposite pattern. This creates a stronger evidence base for understanding how climate conditions, water availability, and local production constraints translate into real-world resource use and efficiency outcomes.

This regional lens has a practical impact: it allows Almondco to tailor support and improvement conversations to what is actually happening in each region, rather than applying generic recommendations. It also enables Almondco to develop more realistic, region-sensitive guidance on where the “big levers” typically sit (e.g., irrigation efficiency in one area versus energy or nutrient strategy in another). Over time, this can support more targeted extension activity, more relevant grower communication, and better prioritisation of cooperative-wide sustainability investments. Importantly, the program has produced measurable “first-year learnings” that are already improving the design for year two. The pilot experience confirmed that participation is maximised when the data request is clear, confidentiality is explicit, and the output is concise and directly useful.

It also confirmed the value of pairing charts with plain-English interpretation so the outputs can be used in grower discussions, budgeting, and operational planning rather than remaining a technical sustainability document.

Overall, the first year’s outcomes can be summarised as: (1) behavioural impact through clearer visibility and stronger value-for-money questioning at farm level; (2) analytical capability at cooperative level through region-based, evidence-backed insights; and (3) strategic readiness for Scope 3 and broader sustainability expectations through building a high-quality primary data foundation that can scale with Almondco’s 2026 participation commitments.

In what ways is the project innovative?

This project is innovative because it applies enterprise-grade analytics to orchard operations at scale, using primary grower data (not generic factors) to calculate Scope 3 intensity and reveal the true “hotspots” of cost and emissions. The benchmark report translates complex inputs into practical decisions via per-hectare and per-tonne comparisons, helping growers test value-for-money of practices and target the levers that matter most. It strengthens Almondco’s mandatory-reporting readiness while directly driving farm efficiency and profitability. All findings were presented to growers in January 2026 in each region which is driving significant engagement for participation for the 2026 crop.