Profitability, productivity and sustainability: Bobby Miller at CommBank's Momentum Conference

There's a phrase that's been doing the rounds in agricultural finance circles for a while now- the triple bottom line: profitability, productivity and sustainability. The Commonwealth Bank's Momentum 2024 Conference in March brought that conversation into sharp focus, with a panel that included Bobby Miller alongside Angela Hammond from Landcare Australia and Mark Gubbins from Coolana Rural, moderated by CommBank's Natasha Greenwood.

Bobby's contribution centred on what emissions tracking actually does for a farming business, beyond the compliance angle that tends to dominate the conversation. When a producer understands where their emissions come from, they start to see their business differently. Inputs that were once just costs become levers for both financial and emissions efficiency. Emissions intensity (the relationship between how much is produced and how much is emitted to produce it) becomes another way of reading business performance. And having that data in a format that can be shared with banks, supply chains and insurers changes the nature of those conversations.

The feedback from Ruminati's producer base had been clear on this: the value of the platform isn't just in generating a report. It's in the process of building one: understanding the numbers, identifying where the big emissions sources are, and starting to think about what changes to management or inputs might move them.

For a room full of agricultural finance professionals, that framing tends to land well. The financial sector's interest in farm-level sustainability data has moved well beyond green credentials- it's increasingly about risk, resilience and long-term viability.

Thanks to Natasha Greenwood and the CommBank team for an event that takes the agricultural sustainability conversation seriously and creates space for producers and industry to work through it together.