Farming for the Future

The Farming for the Future programme is well established within the Woolworths Food agricultural supply chain. Farmers have seen the benefits of implementing some of the innovative mitigation and adaptation strategies in relation to sustainable farming and, most importantly, the management of scarce resources. Through this programme, we work with our suppliers to decrease their water footprint over time, and to determine any risk to the supply of products. This is done by implementing annual Water Footprint Index (WFI) assessments as part of Farming for the Future assessments. The WFI takes into account 116 parameters linked to water-usage efficiency, wastewater, alien vegetation, and soil quality, among others, and helps to track an individual supplier’s progress year-on year. This assessment was rolled out to an additional 57 farmers this year. Using five years of WFI data, we have begun to conduct analyses to understand the critical success factors for water-usage efficiency in our supply base. This will be used to develop case studies as a reference for shared learning among our Farming for the Future suppliers. In addition, we are assisting farmers in preparing for possible water-usage allocation shifts in the future by ensuring they are equipped with the right data.