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Australian Platform News | |||
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Secretary's Visit to General Assembly, Switzerland
SAI Global Platform held its General Assembly in Switzerland on the 27 April 2009 and for the first time there was representation from a Platform chapter. Selwyn Heilbron, Secretary of SAI Platform Australia had the opportunity to present to delegates on cutting edge sustainability issues impacting Australia and the activities of the Australian Platform. Selwyn found the meeting to be an outstanding opportunity to learn about action undertaken by leading corporations internationally in enhancing agricultural sustainability and provided an occasion to raise the profile of work being carried out in Australia to address agricultural sustainability challenges. |
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General Meeting – May
The Chapter held its most recent General Meeting in May. The meeting heard that the number of initiatives the Australian Platform is undertaking is growing rapidly, providing our members with more in-depth exposure and experience with agricultural sustainability issues. In a reciprocal arrangement with SAI Global Platform access will now be available to both the Global and Australian websites for members significantly expanding the amount of information we can share. Our President and Secretary recently met with the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Hon. Tony Burke to provide an update on the activities of SAI Platform. The Minister was very interested to hear of the SAI Platform initiative, our progress and plans. The development of executives' knowledge on sustainable agriculture is one of the Australian Platform's important priorities. Recent research we conducted found that the best education mechanisms members can benefit from include learning through member-based leadership; exchange of information via working groups; field trips; courses and events; mapouts; in-house training and research papers and articles. These avenues are already embraced in our initiatives or being explored further. Over two-thirds of our members have now completed their mapouts, so we are not too far away from documenting all members' sustainability projects. Also on the horizon is the start of our first pilot project in the Grains Working Group. |
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Working Group Meeting – Customer Demand
The inaugural working group for Customer Demand Working Group was held in May and featured two presentations. In the first presentation, the influence of sustainability on brand marketing was canvassed and Stefan Grafe, Managing Partner, Mext Market Management Consultants presented on 'building trust to drive your sustainability credibility'. Stefan suggested there is an important paradigm shift underway in consumer thinking with an operating approach to brands now required as opposed to lifestyle approach, which is traditionally used for food products. Of note was how important it is that corporations do 'the right thing' environmentally in producing products. Tony Hawthorne, Fosters Group gave a presentation on the company's latest beer and wine sustainability initiatives. Fosters have recently released a range of products including Wolf Blass red and white wines in screw cap plastic bottles, Cascade Green Beer and Crown Lager in Aluminium bottles and members had the opportunity to see these first hand and hear about the marketing and production processes behind these. To find out more visit www.wolfblassgreenlabel.com/default.aspx |
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Members in the News
Nestle have recently released their Oceania Shared value report which is available on line at www.nestle.com.au/AboutUs/Default.htm Rural Industries and Research Development Corporation is in the process of preparing a report on the issues surrounding use of Life Cycle Assessments and implications for Australian agriculture. |
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Profile – Kathleen Plowman, Vice President SAI Platform Australia
As General Manager Policy for Australian Pork Ltd, Kathleen's division is responsible for government and stakeholder relations and strategic policy development and analysis in relation to climate change and environmental sustainability, quality assurance, food safety, animal care and health, quarantine and biosecurity, feed security, emergency management, and market access and trade. Kathleen has held the position of acting CEO of the Pork Council of Australia, the Australian pork industry's previous producer representative body. She has also worked as policy director for the wool producer policy body, the Wool Council of Australia. She began her career at the Reserve Bank of Australia and later worked in business management consulting and training in the financial sector. She also is a director of the Orana Rudolf Steiner School Board and serves on the Board Executive and previously chaired the Finance Committee. Kathleen has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from the University of New England and is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. |
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MLA obtains funding to address climate change
Meat and Livestock Australia, an SAI Platform Australia member, has been successful in obtaining funding from DAFF to address climate change issues. Australia's Farming Future (AFF) is the Australian Government's climate change initiative for primary industries, administered by Dept of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry. It provides $130 million over four years to help primary producers adapt and respond to climate change. One of the initiatives within AFF is a Climate Change Research Program that will provide funding for research projects and on-farm demonstration activities. MLA was successful in developing and leading three R&D bids, namely: 1. 'Reducing emissions from livestock.' This program commits $28.7m over 3 years to develop within the next decade practical on-farm options to achieve a significant reduction in methane emissions from livestock, and to quantify the level of abatement achievable. Partners with DAFF and MLA include NSW DPI, CSIRO Livestock Industries, UNE, SARDI, Beef CRC, Vic DPI, Univ Melb., Univ WA, Sheep CRC, Dairy Australia and AWI. 2. 'Developing improved on-ground practices and industry strategies for adapting to climate change within beef production enterprises across northern Australia.' This program commits $3.2m over 3 years to provide the best-available information for producers (using bio-economic modelling) on how to manage current and future climate variability across the different regions of northern Australia. Partners with DAFF and MLA include Qld Primary Industry and Fisheries; NT Department of Regional Development, Primary Industry, Fisheries and Resources; Department of Agriculture and Food, WA, and CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. 3. 'Climate Change Adaptation in the Southern Australian Livestock Industries.' This program commits $3.2m over 3 years to use predicted changes in seasonal weather patterns to evaluate a range of responses for enterprise type within regions across Southern Australia (including variables such as soil type, fertiliser regime, and base stocking rate) in terms of productivity, profitability, environmental impacts (input and output estimates for a range of nutrients, stream flows etc), and the variability around those. Partners with DAFF and MLA include University of Melbourne; CSIRO's Agricultural Sustainability Initiative; Tasmanian Institute Agricultural Research, Dairy Australia, Australian Wool Innovation (to be confirmed); other southern research organisations (to be confirmed). |
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Global SAI News | |||
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General Assembly News
SAI Platform held their General Assembly 2009 in April, in the beautiful surrounding countryside of Geneva, Switzerland. It provided a juncture for members to reflect on the achievements of the Platform over the past year and consider strategy for the future. The Platform welcomed two new members in 2009 - Agroterra and Kellogg, set up a new Water working group, ran two seminars on water and on certification schemes, launched a new interactive website and hosted a high level conference in conjunction with The US Sustainable Food Lab and The Keystone Centre as impressive key achievements. A number of keynote speakers presented to members at the assembly including Selwyn Heilbron, our Secretary. The President Hans Johr considered future initiatives in his presentation and these included encouraging membership from the Agricultural Sector, leveraging more external funding, reviewing the structure of working groups, developing case studies from pilot projects, undertaking cost benefit analysis of sustainability projects and providing input to the Copenhagen Summit on greenhouse gases. Their 2008 SAI Global Platform Annual report has also been recently released and is available online at www.saiplatform.org/ . |
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Australian Sustainability News | |||
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Delay of the ETS
Arguably the most significant sustainability news in Australia at present is the Government's progress on the Emissions Trading Scheme. It is particularly important for Australian agriculture given projections provided by the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator the Hon. Penny Wong are for a 2-3°C temperature increase, pasture growth to slow by roughly 31 per cent and the national livestock carrying capacity to decrease by approximately 40 per cent. In May Minister Wong also announced a new 25 per cent conditional emissions reduction target and the Rudd Government also announced it will delay the start of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to 1 July 2011 to help Australian companies manage the impacts of the global recession. Other key announcements included unlimited $10 permits for the first year and additional assistance given for the first five years as a global recession buffer to those activities qualifying for emissions intensive trade exposed assistance. Household carbon savings (particularly around purchasing green power) are also to be taken into account when setting future carbon reduction targets. Other related news: • Two senate reports on the CPRS were released on 16 June shedding no new light on the debate. • The National Farmers Federation although relieved the ETS scheme has been delayed on the one hand they are still concerned the ETS will mean farmers are unable to pass on the extra costs involved. • A recent Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation study found the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will increase farm costs even if agriculture isn't included in the scheme. |
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Internet News | |||
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Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and its impact on Farm impact
To find out more about reports on Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and its impact on Farm impact visit the following links. RIRDC CPRS Economic Impact Report on Agriclture recently released https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/items/09-064 Agriculture and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/pubs/fs_agriculture_cprs.pdf Agriculture and the voluntary carbon market www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/pubs/fs_agvcm.pdF Agricultural emissions www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/pubs/fs_ag_emissions.pdf Reforestation on farms www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/pubs/fs_reforestation.pdf Forward work program to determine appropriate carbon pollution mitigation policies for agriculture www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/pubs/agriculture_climate_change_work_program.pdf The terms of reference for the Technical Options Development Group to assess alternative greenhouse gas mitigation policies for Australian agriculture www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/pubs/technical_options-developmen_group.pdf These can be found on the agriculture section of the Department of Climate Change www.climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/agriculture/index.html> website Information on the Australia's Farming Future (AFF) initiative can be located on the climate change section of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry www.daff.gov.au/climatechange Australia's Farming Future www.daff.gov.au/climatechange/australias-farming-future - the Australian Government's climate change initiative for primary industries. It provides funding over four years to help primary producers adapt and respond to climate change. Australia's Farming Future Climate Change Research Program www.daff.gov.au/climatechange/australias-farming-future/climate-change-and-productivity-research is funding research projects and on-farm demonstrations to help prepare Australia's primary industries for climate change and build the resilience of our agricultural sector into the future. Following on from the Agriculture and Emissions Trading conference held earlier this year, the Australian Farm Institute has started up an on-line forum page containing information and updates about emissions trading and agriculture. Please feel free to have a look at the page and leave any comments. The page can be accessed via the following link, or simply go to the Institute website and follow the directions from the home page. farminstitute.businesscatalyst.com/_blog/Australian_Farm_Institute_Weblog The above links have been provided by Australian Pork and were developed in consultation with industry representatives and hope to answer many of the common queries about agricultural emissions, the CPRS, voluntary carbon markets, and carbon sequestration in on-farm forestry operations. |
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