UBC Okanagan researchers and Canadian egg farmers have created a practical tool to help producers balance environmental and economic trade-offs.
Researchers at UBC Okanagan and Canadian egg farmers have built a practical decision-making tool to help producers balance environmental, economic and management trade-offs on their farms.
The project developed software that brings together key sustainability indicators in one place to help farmers establish benchmarks for their farms, compare options and understand the consequences of different green technology adoption and management choices.
“Too often, sustainability tools work in theory but fail in practice, or lack buy-in from their intended audience,” says Dr. Vivek Arulnathan, an alumnus from UBCO’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program. “By involving farmers throughout the design process, we built something that reflects how decisions are actually made on farms.”
Farmers were involved throughout the process, shaping what information mattered, how it was presented and how it could be used to inform operations on the ground.
The study, published in Sustainability, was led by Dr. Arulnathan, a researcher with UBCO’s Food Systems Priority Research for Integrated Sustainability Management Lab, alongside Dr. Eric Li from the Faculty of Management and Dr. Nathan Pelletier, an associate professor of sustainable food systems at UBC Okanagan.
The research team worked directly with egg farmers to shape how sustainability information is presented, interpreted and used in daily decision-making. The approach recognizes that these measures only matter if they align with the realities of farm operations, regulatory pressures and economic constraints.
Farmers involved in the project helped identify the most useful sustainability measures, decide how to show results and make the trade-offs more transparent.
The study also highlights how the approach works as a scalable model for other agricultural sectors facing similar challenges, from livestock production to crop systems. By involving stakeholders early, the sustainability tools are more likely to be trusted, adopted and maintained over time.
According to Dr. Pelletier, the work links sustainability science and agricultural practice.
“Producers are under increasing pressure to measure sustainability performance and demonstrate improvement over time, but the tools available to them rarely reflect their operational context. This research shows how co-design can bridge that gap.”
