Farm-Level Aquaculture Performance Index

WHY IS FLAPI DIFFERENT?

With the proliferation of standards, certifications, eco-labels and seafood guides, why does the aquaculture industry need FLAPI? FLAPI does not strive to set a standard or certify production, but rather assess the environmental performance of farms in real time, inexpensively and quantitatively. Current sustainability initiatives don’t provide means through which to compare different species, production systems or regions, or any way to see how different products measure up alongside each other. They also lack the ability to predict the effect of on-site production changes or policy decisions. FLAPI is a tool that offers a unique suite of information and opportunities that are not available elsewhere.

WHAT IS FLAPI?

FLAPI helps individual marine aquaculture producers determine the environmental performance of their farms. Innovators are at risk of being lumped together with conventional producers and characterized by the same ecological impacts. FLAPI is a tool that allows forward thinking producers to differentiate themselves from conventional aquaculture in a simple yet scientifically robust manner. It provides precise quantitative data reflecting how environmentally sensitive practices yield superior performance.

FLAPI is a second generation GAPI tool (Global Aquaculture Performance Index  www.gapi.ca) that operates at the market relevant scale – the farm. Rather than the country-species pairs assessed by GAPI (e.g. Norwegian Atlantic cod, Scottish Atlantic salmon), FLAPI uses the same objective methodology to evaluate performance at the individual farm level. A FLAPI score reflects ten environmental performance indicator categories, measuring how close a farm comes to meeting the target of zero impact in each.

HOW DOES FLAPI WORK?

FLAPI is a systematic method to evaluate ecological performance of key drivers. It is not uncommon for popular standards and certifications schemes to consider over 100 indicators, the majority of which however are secondary in importance to the relatively few key performance indicators. FLAPI focuses only on these core indicators, similar to how Zagat (www.Zagat.com), Michelin (www.MichelinGuide.com) or Consumer Reports (www.ConsumerReports.org) produce their ratings.. This streamlined and efficient approach provides the requisite information to confidently evaluate environmental performance while economizing producer’s resources required to collect data.  An extensive survey of all major buyer’s guides, certification schemes and organic standards was identified the core issue areas for which expert-designed indicators were constructed. These indicators condense current scientific understanding and farm data into simple category scores, as well as an overall performance score on a scale of 0-100. The data required to complete a FLAPI assessment are likely those already being collected by farms and do not require large time or monetary expenditures.

An anticipated web-based interactive tool for FLAPI will allow producers to evaluate their environmental performance as well as explore different potential scenarios, separating themselves from counterparts within the marketplace.

WHAT CAN FLAPI DO FOR YOU?

FLAPI utilizes standardized measures and a single baseline against which all participants are assessed. Therefore results can directly contrast quantitative environmental performance across species, geographies and production systems. Like GAPI, FLAPI is a comparative tool to highlight differential environmental performance of production systems. Now at the farm level, FLAPI can not only demonstrate the differential environmental advantages of alternative production practices, but also identify specific issue areas in which improvement is most achievable and what practices offer the greatest return in achieving better environmental performance.  

FLAPI will also provide an unprecedented opportunity to experiment with different production practices and / or deployment of resources to identify what scenario promises optimal return on investment. This prospective application of FLAPI contributes an important and to date unavailable cost-benefit analysis for management and policy decisions.

+ Optimize Production
FLAPI can be used on-farm to track ecological performance over time or between locations. Indicators require data that are for the most part already being collected at the farm level and can easily be input to calculate the environmental performance. Not only can this be useful to understand which practices efficiently improve performance, but also understand the effect of different regional challenges and decisions. It can help farms optimize the benefit of their sustainability efforts.
+ Distinguish Your Farm from Peer Group
FLAPI is a tool to differentiate high performing producers from conventional production. Through a simple score, comprised of 10 indicators, innovative farms can quantitatively demonstrate that their production methods are environmentally superior to typical producers, both in the same and different geographies.
+ Distinguish Your Products from Others
FLAPI provides a method through which to compare apples to oranges in the aquaculture industry; production system, location or species being raised does not matter, FLAPI’s quantitative framework standardizes data into directly comparable formats and provides a way for producers to demonstrate their superior performance beyond their peer group.
+ Evaluate Standards and Certifications
Given the simplicity and availability of the data required to measure ecological performance through FLAPI, it offers a simple and inexpensive way to compare performance against a certification or standard. It gives producers scientific credibility to support claims of sustainability without the considerable time and monetary commitment required for many certifications.
+ Weigh Future Options
Before instituting costly changes, FLAPI enables producers to evaluate the different environmental performance that would result from modifications to production methodology or technology. When deciding between several performance improving options, FLAPI provides an understanding of how to design optimal cost-effective change.  
+ Forecast Results for Sustainable Solutions
Rather than retroactively assessing the ecological performance of new production sites or novel methods, FLAPI makes it possible to inexpensively forecast these using predicted data. This is useful both for producers looking to design and implement sustainable aquaculture solutions as well as policy-makers wanting to understand the environmental implications of potential options.
 

Download the brochure (279KB | PDF)