When the supply chain comes to you: catching up with McDonald's in Sydney

Earlier this week, Will Onus and Bobby Miller sat down in Sydney with the McDonald's team visiting from Chicago, alongside Phil Tickle from Cibo Labs, Sebastian Martin and Brodie Crouch- part of a broader trip the McDonald's team had been making through their Australian supply chain.

What made the conversation worth having was the approach they brought to it. Rather than arriving with a predetermined framework to present, the focus was genuinely on listening: what actually supports productivity and sustainability at the farm level, what's getting in the way, and where a business like McDonald's can play a useful role in solving it. That's a different conversation to the one that often happens when global supply chains engage with their producers, and it made for a more honest exchange.

From Ruminati's perspective, the thread that runs through all of these conversations is the same one Will keeps coming back to wearing his farmer hat: technology and reporting frameworks only go somewhere if they make sense in the paddock. Adoption follows value. If the benefit doesn't land back with the producer, it stays a good idea in a meeting room and goes no further.

It was also a good opportunity to share some of the agricultural emissions and deforestation work being developed in Australia with Aisling Andrews, Jessica Rivas and Hillary Fenrich from the McDonald's team. Cibo Labs has been doing strong work in this space, and there's more smart, locally-grounded thinking happening here than often gets recognised internationally. The common thread across all of it - emissions tech, deforestation monitoring, natural capital assessment - is that scale only comes when the people doing the work on the ground can see what's in it for them.

Thanks to the McDonald's team for making the trip and for approaching it the way they did. These are the conversations that move things forward!