Measuring Sustainability

The mission

Our mission is to drive the transition towards farming systems that deliver positive outcomes for climate, nature and people.

The Global Farm Metric (GFM) is a framework to align global farming stakeholders around a shared understanding of holistic sustainability at farm-level. It defines shared outcomes and indicators across social, environmental and economic dimensions.

Farmers and stakeholders across the sector can use the framework to build knowledge, guide sustainability measurement and inform action. This enables systems change from the ground up and top down, driving the collective action needed to restore and nourish the health of people and planet.

The challenge

Farming contributes to a wide range of global challenges. It can also be the solution.

However, there are barriers that prevent farmers becoming drivers of positive change. These include:

Knowledge and understanding
Measurement and monitoring
Systemic and structural

Since 2015, the SFT has been spearheading international work on True Cost Accounting (TCA). This work aims to reveal the hidden costs of unsustainable food production and highlight the value of sustainable food and farming systems for climate, nature and people. With harmful practices costing the UK public purse up to £116 billion each year, the SFT has called for a transition to farming systems that reward the delivery of public benefits and penalise pollution. However, in the absence of a consistent means of measuring and rewarding these benefits, meaningful change has remained out of reach.

Barriers to change

Knowledge and understanding

Many farmers and farming stakeholders want to be more sustainable, but a lack of clear, shared knowledge often gets in the way. Conflicting advice, complexity and siloed definitions cause confusion and overlook the interconnectedness of the farming system. This can mean positive impacts in one area (like carbon emissions and sequestration) mask negative consequences elsewhere (like biodiversity and soil health). Without a common, holistic understanding of farm-level sustainability, aligned decision-making remains out of reach.

Measurement and monitoring
It’s difficult to track progress without a baseline for comparison. Yet many farmers and supply chain actors struggle with data collection tools that are narrow in scope, burdensome or not tailored to farm context. Without consistent, meaningful data, it’s hard to track progress, prove impact or access funding. This gap limits the ability of all stakeholders to plan, support and scale what works.

Systemic and structural
From the weather and soil type, to politics and resource availability, farmers are influenced by forces beyond the farm gate. Markets, policies and financial pressures often reward short-term gains over long-term sustainability. Until these systems evolve, farmers—and those who buy from, advise or regulate them—will continue to face barriers that slow progress and constrain innovation.

The solution

The GFM tackles key barriers to sustainable farming by creating a shared language, facilitating practical ways to measure outcomes and establishing a framework that aligns the farming system.

It has the power to connect farmers, supply chains and policymakers through shared sustainability goals and consistent, whole-farm data. By focusing on outcomes that matter to everyone, the GFM supports more joined-up action and drives long-term, system-wide change.

Knowledge and understanding
The GFM provides a shared language for sustainability – clear, consistent and grounded in farming realities. It frames sustainability as a whole-farm, whole-system concept, helping farmers and stakeholders understand how environmental, social and economic outcomes interconnect. By making the system visible, the GFM supports learning and alignment across the food system.

Measurement and monitoring
Developed with and for farmers, the GFM is designed to be embedded within existing data collection tools to enable a practical, outcomes-based approach to assessment. The framework is adaptable, facilitating consistent measurement that’s suited to local contexts. By focusing on shared outcomes rather than prescriptive actions, it creates data that is useful for farmers, comparable across farms and actionable for supply chains, investors and policymakers.

Systemic and structural
The GFM helps align stakeholders by anchoring decisions in shared outcomes that matter to all – from farmers and advisors to government and finance. It bridges farm practice with policy and market expectations, enabling better reporting, guiding investment and supporting systems that reward long-term sustainability. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for collaborative, structural change.

Driving change

From farmers and financiers to businesses and policymakers, every stakeholder benefits by aligning around a more holistic, outcomesbased approach to sustainability. Responsibility is distributed fairly across the system, preventing the burden of change from falling on any one group alone.

From the ground up, a strong and holistic evidence base fuels decision making on farms and across the industry. Actions are well-informed and impacts are monitored to mitigate unintended consequences.

At the same time, top-down transformation creates the conditions and financial incentives that empower farmers to achieve positive outcomes.

Practices that contribute to global crises are disincentivised, while delivery of public goods is rewarded. This creates effective and lasting change that can reshape entire landscapes and the global farming system, bringing us closer to a truly sustainable future.

Farmers gain the knowledge, data and support needed to navigate sustainability challenges, manage risk and transition to resilient, productive and sustainable farm systems.

Farm advisors provide holistic guidance and enable peer-to-peer learning across diverse systems, supported by robust assessments and baselines for informed decisionmaking and long-term monitoring.

Researchers and educators collaborate across disciplines and contexts using a common language, enhancing knowledge exchange and activities such as mapping, data aggregation and modelling.

Data experts create aligned, outcomes-based data-sets that evidence farm-level sustainability at scale. Data transferability is optimised, building value to users and encouraging long-term engagement.

Assurance and reporting bodies including certifiers, auditors and labelling schemes, collect outcomes-based data to support transparency and validate sustainability claims, strengthening trust and compliance with evolving regulatory and market demands.

Value chains including processors, wholesalers and retailers, use primary data for traceability and transparency, with holistic sourcing policies that support farmers and create resilient supply chains.

Consumers understand the sustainability of products based on consistent and transparent data, enabling informed choices that drive demand for sustainable produce.

Governments and policymakers support farmers with incentives and evidence-based policies that drive shared outcomes. Aligned assessment monitor the efficacy of interventions and track progress towards local, national and international goals.

Financial institutions integrate outcomes-based sustainability into risk, investment and finance strategies, delivering effective support for sustainable farming based on holistic evidence.