Efficient Environmental Footprint Calculation Through API Integrations

Environmental footprint calculation using API integrations offers food companies an efficient way to measure and influence their environmental impacts directly within familiar systems.

How Do Food Companies Benefit From Integration Solutions in Environmental Calculations?

Food companies, especially larger ones, often operate multiple systems such as producer portals, ERP systems, and retailer platforms. While these systems generate vast amounts of data, they cannot independently conduct comprehensive, science-based footprint calculations. Nor do they need to!

Environmental footprint calculations through API integrations leverage existing data in a new way, offering numerous benefits to companies, such as:

Time Savings

• Reduces manual work by eliminating the need to re-enter data already available in a system.

Improved Data Quality

• Minimizes errors associated with manual data input.

Enhanced Traceability and Transparency:

• Visibility into the origins of products and raw materials, as well as their environmental impacts, is increasingly important today.

User-Friendly Experience for Producers and Farmers:

• Producers can enter data into their familiar systems without the need to learn new tools.

How Do API-Based Environmental Calculations Work?

Imagine a food company that uses a producer portal for farmers and suppliers. By integrating the portal with software specialized in environmental impact assessment, like Biocode, the required calculation data can be transferred automatically. The process is simple:

1. Farmers enter data (e.g., fertilizer use, cultivation details) into the familiar portal.
2. The system sends this data to Biocode’s calculation engine.
3. The engine processes the data and returns results to the portal for both farmers and the company to access.

Building such an integration requires an initial implementation project and some light development work on the producer portal to ensure all necessary input parameters are available in the system.

Why Use an External Calculation Engine?

While companies could theoretically develop their own calculation engines, this approach presents challenges:

• Keeping Up With Scientific Advances: Calculation models and guidelines must be updated regularly as science evolves.
• Need for Expertise: Maintaining up-to-date models requires specialized expertise.

Outsourcing calculations to an expert service like Biocode allows companies to shift the responsibility for model and guideline updates to the service provider.

Case Studies: API Integrations in Practice

Case HKFoods and the Producer Portal

HKFoods has integrated Biocode’s calculation engine into its producer portal.

• Process: Producers input data into the producer portal. The system sends the data to Biocode, which uses lifecycle models developed and maintained by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) to calculate carbon and water footprints as well as biodiversity impacts. The results are then returned to the portal.
• Outcome: Both producers and HKFoods receive the calculation results, enabling them to improve environmental responsibility, for example, by reducing emissions or addressing other environmental impacts.

Case Mtech and Minun Maatilani Wisu

Mtech has integrated Biocode’s API into its farm management software, Minun Maatilani Wisu, used by thousands of Finnish farmers.

• Process: Farmers input their cultivation practices into Wisu, which sends the data to Biocode. The calculation engine evaluates changes in soil carbon stocks and returns the results to Wisu for the farmer to review.
• Outcome: Highlighting carbon in Wisu provides farmers with a new perspective on improving farm practices. By incorporating carbon calculations during the planning phase, farmers can assess impacts before implementing their plans.

Adding carbon visibility to Minun Maatilani Wisu is a natural extension of its functionalities. Since many activities during the growing season impact both yields and soil carbon stocks, assessments must be possible during the planning stage. This new tool offers fresh insights for developing farm practices.

Jani Kivipelto, Product Manager at MTtech

Why API Integrations Are the Future of Environmental Footprint Calculations

API-based solutions make environmental accounting more efficient, accurate, and actionable. They enable seamless data transfer between systems, reduce manual work, improve data quality, and enhance transparency.

For food companies and farmers, these tools represent a step forward toward a more sustainable future. With integrations, companies can focus on what matters most: reducing their environmental impacts and driving sustainable development.

👉 Learn more about Biocode’s integrations!