RGA Landcare

Australian Agriculture Sustainability Framework

The Australian Agriculture Sustainability Framework is being developed to showcase the sustainability credentials of Australian Agriculture. It will receive whole of farm data for the range of commodities produced.

Collaborations - LEP_23_030_LLC002

The issue

Australian agriculture must trade into the highest value markets around the world. To ensure access to these markets the agriculture sector must promote its high level of management. This requires a verifiable collection of data that demonstrates performance. The data will require metrics on the environmental, social and governance performance of Australian agriculture. The data will need to be used to prepare a succinct report to enable clear communication of the sustainability of Australian Agriculture.

The solution

The solution is the development of the Australian Agriculture Sustainability Framework (AASF). I was aware of the development of the AASF and previously worked on sustainability reporting. From this experience I knew there was a need for a tool to accept data from individual commodity frameworks to build a national picture of Australian agriculture's performance. I created connections with the National Farmers Federation and the Australian Farm Institute to enable me to provide into and follow the development of the AASF.

The impact

To date I have attended AASF community of practice meetings to review the content and provide input. This especially related to how Landcare could collaborate with stakeholders to enable data to be collected from the range of commodities produced on regional farms. This collaboration would include promoting habitat protection and enhancement in keeping with regional plans while collecting the data of the environmental outcomes for feeding up into the AASF.

Learnings

The key learnings include:

  • Simple data entry of the relevant data;
  • The need for commodity frameworks to collaborate so that only data that is common to all commodities on farm is entered once; and 
  • Use regional vegetation plans to guide environment improvement through sustainability frameworks.
Author: Neil Bull

Key facts

  • We need an Australian sustainability framework.
  • We need collaboration across commodities to simplify data entry for farmers.
  • Metrics used can become benchmarks for continuous improvement.
  • Metrics for biodiversity can be used to guide farm actions that deliver against regional vegetation plans.