The recent farmer protests in the EU had a swift and powerful impact. Within weeks of citywide protests, where major routes were blocked by haybales and tractors, a key plank of the EU’s plan to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040 was struck out of a policy document.
READ MORE: EU goes easy on farmers in 2040 emissions goal
It was a major win for a farm lobby angered by the prospect of being tied up in green tape and forced to conform to top-down targets.
But a leading expert on global climate policy has told an evokeAg audience that the momentum to decarbonise is stronger than ever, and that not only will Australia be a beneficiary of increased global investment, but that the supply chain will have to work even harder to incentivise change.
Charlotte Weston, global director of Sustainability at EY and a member of the Sustainable Markets Institute, was one of four speakers on the Leaders and Laggards: Pathways to a More Sustainable Agrifood Landscape panel , hosted by APlus News' Head Of Content Jackson Hewett.
Left to right - APlus News Head of Content Jackson Hewett, Kerridge Farm's Jacqui Biddulph, Melbourne University Professor Richard Eckard, Rumin8 CEO David Messina & EY's Global Sustainability Director Charlotte Weston.
She said that jurisdictions signing up to global reporting frameworks will create a global baseline for sustainability reporting, provide investors with globally comparable information, and hold companies to account on emissions reductions. Those commitments were not going away.
Following the European farm protests, Ms Weston said that countries and companies would want to avoid a scenario where targets are set that cannot be met and cause “huge amounts of upheaval for people who are trying to do really challenging day jobs and produce food”.
With the EU having set the spending targets for climate action at 30% of its combined multi-annual budgetary framework for 2021-2027, she highlighted the need to mobilise transition finance and financing measures to mobilise investment, alongside providing education, support and engagement on farms to “empower people to have the right data, own their data and actually engage with the opportunities”.
Jacqui Biddulph, a WA dairy farmer with 420 head producing three million litres per year said that integrating emissions reporting with standard financial reporting had been a relatively seamless process, and she was confident 80% of the WA dairy industry would be able to report emissions data by the end of the year.
Working with existing business tools developed by the dairy industry, farmers were able to generate their emissions data by recording inputs such as fertiliser and energy.
Ms Biddulph said they were already being rewarded by their local processor and she was confident that the baselining process would continue to deliver further benefits.
“It is private data. We do have to collect it. But I'm of the view that farmers ultimately will be incentivised one way or another to supply that information,” she said.
“What we're trying to do in dairy is have an industry position where we can categorically say ‘this is where we are, this is where we're going, this is how we're going to get there’. And we've got verifiable credible data to back that up.”
Dr Richard Eckard, key architect of many of the frameworks used to calculate agricultural emissions, said that Australia’s early work in setting and reporting would put it in the box seat when it came to global food demand.
READ MORE FROM DR ECKARD: Australia will 'regret' putting price on soil carbon
“If you've set a target as a global buyer, well, surely you're going to start saying, well, where do you buy the lowest emissions overhead? And if you were buying wheat on the global stage, you'd come to WA as the lowest emissions wheat in the globe right now,” he explained.
“Because you've got to buy carbon credits to get to your target. So it becomes more expensive to buy from the higher emitting countries. It's already going to play out.”
That is a prospect that Ms Weston expects will make Australia more attractive to global investors.
“I think it is already attractive to investors, but I think there are huge opportunities for Australian ag,” she said.
David Messina, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Rumin8, which is producing a methane reducing pharmaceutical product based on asparagopsis, said that the focus on food at the recent COP28 climate conference in Dubai and a methane pledge, where countries representing 45% of global methane committed to reduce their emissions by 30% by 2030, would further drive investment in climate technology.
“The methane pledge was fundamental. The money that was committed to finding solutions (to methane emissions) will start to flow through,” Mr Messina said.
“There's definitely billions of dollars going into climate and ag and now climate-agtech.”
Rumin8 raised $12 million from Microsoft founder Bill Gates in January last year and Mr Messina said the message from Mr Gates at COP28 was that investments in climate technologies were taking longer and required more capital than expected. But the fruits of that work were on its way.
“That was the biggest learning for someone who's been passionate about climate and investing in climate for a long time," he said.
“But it's coming, and the next few years are going to be really interesting and we'll start to see the benefit of some of that patience and money.”
AuctionsPlus is the digital media partner of evokeAG.
