For most large food and agriculture businesses, the vast majority of their emissions sit outside their own operations, in the farms, feedlots and processors that make up their supply chain, and that is what the term Scope 3 describes. Under Australia’s new mandatory climate reporting laws it is no longer something those businesses can note and move on from, which is why the questions are now reaching producers.
Ruminati co-founder Bobby Miller and Bill Findlay joined industry leaders at the Impact X Decarb Forum in Sydney for a day of roundtable discussions and panel sessions on exactly this challenge. The standout conversation was a panel moderated by Mark Rowland from the Climate Action Foundation, with Justin Merrell from Lion, Phil Senn from Inghams, Amanda Robertson from Nestlé and Aaron Simmons from NSW DPIRD working through how major businesses are managing emissions reporting in practice, and what that means for the diverse production systems behind their products.
What came through clearly was that the industry is further along than the headlines often suggest. Large businesses are moving, supply chains are engaging, and producers who have started building their emissions profile are already in a better position than those waiting to see how it all unfolds. The complexity of agricultural systems is acknowledged across the board, and it is not holding anyone back from getting started.
For Ruminati, days like this are a useful reminder of why the work matters. The emissions data that comes off farms is increasingly central to how large businesses meet their reporting obligations, which makes it important that it is captured accurately and consistently, and in a format that holds up when a producer chooses to share it. That is the challenge the industry is working through, and a producer with their own emissions report already in hand is in a good position to answer when a buyer asks, and to decide what is shared and with whom.
