A silver buckshot approach to emissions at the Sustainable Agriculture Summit

More than 150 agricultural leaders were in Canberra this week for the inaugural Sustainable Agriculture Summit, hosted by Agriculture Minister Murray Watt and supported by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, and Ruminati CEO Peter Leihn was among them. The day was about where emissions policy and practice in the sector are heading, and for Peter the most significant announcement was the government’s move to formalise standards for emissions calculation methodologies at the farm gate.

The reason that matters to a producer is that emissions figures from different farms and systems can’t be meaningfully compared or aggregated without a consistent methodology, and the supply chain can’t use them with any reliability either. That makes standardisation the foundation that everything else in this space is built on, and the commitment to get it in place is an important one. Ruminati implements standards and guidance and doesn’t set them, so the team will be across the changes to make sure they’re reflected in the platform.

The line that stuck most came from Richard Heath, who said “We need a silver buckshot, not a silver bullet to reduce emissions in agriculture.” Australian agriculture covers a wide range of systems, climates and management practices, so no single intervention, whether a technology or a practice, is going to move the dial on emissions at scale. What’s needed is a combination of approaches matched to those differences, along with a supply chain that shares the responsibility for driving change so that it doesn’t sit entirely with producers.

It was a good sign that the message was aired at a ministerial forum. The people in attendance suggest the appetite for that kind of coordinated approach is strong, with CommBank’s Natasha Greenwood, NAB’s Josie Zilm, McDonald’s Rebecca Honeysett, Mort & Co’s Brad Robinson and Australian Pork’s Margo Andrae all there. Standards at the farm gate and a supply chain that shares the load point in the same direction, and the team will keep following both as the changes come through.