Nutrition Metrics Guidance
Nutrition metrics describe food-system output where RICA projects improve availability, quality, or resilience of nutrient-relevant produce. The current common Nutrition metric is Horticultural Produce.
Metric
Section titled “Metric”| Metric | Unit | Reporting Boundary | Primary Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horticultural Produce | tonnes | Horticultural output delivered into local food systems during the reporting period. | Harvest logs, sale records, dispatch records, buyer receipts, quality records. |
Horticultural Produce
Section titled “Horticultural Produce”Horticultural foods (fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms) are incredibly nutrient-dense, serving as essential sources of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and disease-fighting antioxidants. The Horticultural Produce metric should cover the relevant horticultural output of greenhouses, mushroom farms, agroforestry, or related food-system projects without requiring sponsors to split every produce category unless that split is useful for the project.
The metric should report tonnes for the period. Sponsors should distinguish produced, harvested, sold, stored, processed, or delivered volumes where the project has multiple stages. Reviewers should check that the same physical produce is not counted twice across production, storage, and processing metrics.
Food-System Context
Section titled “Food-System Context”Horticultural Produce is most useful when paired with context: buyer channel, local-market relevance, quality grade, spoilage reduction, or continuity of supply during climate stress. These details may live in the Project Information Model, O&M records, or evidence notes rather than the metric value itself.