FAO Releases GLEAM-X R-Package as Open Source

Advancing towards greater transparency and accessibility in agrifood data and modelling, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has officially released the GLEAM-X R package as open-source software. This milestone reflects a broader institutional shift that embraces open-source approaches as a key pillar of FAO’s digital transformation and commitment to global knowledge sharing. Since joining the Digital Public Goods Alliance in 2022, FAO has promoted a Digital Public Goods (DPG)-first approach, establishing its DPG strategy and supporting internal teams in identifying potential DPGs within its digital portfolio. 

The Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model (GLEAM) is FAO’s premier framework applying internationally recognized methodologies, including the IPCC Tier 2 approach and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), to estimate emissions along livestock production chains. Building on these already impressive results, FAO, supported by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Regional Identity of the Government of Germany, took this a step further developing the GLEAM-X R package. 

The new GLEAM-X R package makes livestock emissions analysis more accessible, transparent, and adaptable, bringing FAO’s robust datasets and methodologies directly into the R programming environment, widely used by researchers, analysts, and policymakers. With its official release through CRAN and GitHub, it is the first FAO software package formally cleared for open‑source distribution under the new Digital Assets Management Standard, in line with the DPG-first approach. This shift transforms GLEAM from a standalone tool into a flexible, open modelling ecosystem, establishing a concrete pathway for future releases. 

By moving to an open-source distribution model, FAO is empowering users to: 

• Tailor analysis: adapt standardized FAO methodologies to specific local contexts. 
• Ensure transparency: allow for full peer review of the underlying code and logic. 
• Promote reproducibility: enable researchers worldwide to verify and build upon livestock emission studies. 
  

This level of flexibility is particularly important for countries and institutions seeking to tailor emissions modelling to their own data, policies, and priorities. 

This result highlights FAO’s latest mindset, which identifies open-source distribution as a key pathway for maximizing the impact of its tools. FAO's digital ecosystem is striving to achieve principles of openness, collaboration, and shared global benefit. This shift recognizes that complex global challenges are better addressed when methods, data, and tools can be examined, reused, and improved collectively.  

Explore the GLEAM‑X R package and GLEAM data: FAO GLEAM – Tools and Data 

Contact the GLEAM team at [email protected] 

Contact the CSI Digital Empowerment Team at [email protected].