What grain buyers collecting emissions data directly means for you

For a while now, the emissions questions that reach a grain grower have mostly come from somewhere else in the chain, with a bank or a buyer asking for figures to fill a gap in its own reporting. Some grain buyers are now taking a different route, building programs that collect farm-level emissions data from growers directly. That changes what it is worth having ready on your own farm, and the reason starts with why a buyer would want the data first-hand.

One example reported on this year is GrainCorp, whose supply chain program has grown to include growers putting together their first on-farm emissions figures for the company’s own validated climate targets. Those growers work with agronomy specialists to test what holds up on a working farm. A buyer with targets of its own has a share of its footprint on the farms that supply it, so some would sooner build the relationship and the data route themselves than wait for figures to come through other channels.

GrainCorp is unlikely to be the only buyer thinking this way, although programs like this usually start small and stay small for a while. Most growers will not be in one, and little changes day to day if you are outside it. What the programs show is the direction of travel, with buyers taking a more hands-on interest in where their supply chain figures come from. So whether the question reaches you through an invitation to a particular buyer’s program or from somewhere else, it helps to have figures of your own to start from, because the conversation then begins with how your farm is performing.

A Ruminati emissions report gives you a farm-level picture calculated to the national agricultural emissions guidance, held on your own terms in place of being shaped around one buyer’s pilot. You can set it against your own figures from one year to the next. A buyer’s own program serves that buyer’s targets, and a Ruminati report sits alongside it, so you can begin any conversation about your emissions from what your farm has recorded. On Ruminati, your data stays yours and you choose who sees it.