L.SFP.1010 - Environmental Credentials for grassfed beef - carbon theme

Summary

Customers and other industry stakeholders are increasingly looking for evidence of sustainable production practices, with a particular interest in carbon emissions on-farm. The Environmental Credentials for Australian Grassfed Beef Project (L.SFP.1000) aimed to deliver a national, common platform to allow beef producers to assess their environmental performance and voluntarily demonstrate their environmental credentials to markets. The carbon theme development sub-project used a codesign process, supported by technical peer review from industry experts, to develop the carbon platform design brief for the L.SFP.1000 project. The brief included scope, purpose, indicators, measures and learning objectives and resources. A key challenge for this project was the lack of suitable tools for measuring soil or vegetation carbon sequestration on-farm. A significant benefit to industry from this project is it has demonstrated a well-thought out and executed online codesign process can be incredibly effective at capturing insights from a diversity of red meat producers, at reduced costs compared to face-to-face meetings. Given the high level of interest from consumers in carbon within agriculture, this project will help to secure the ability of industry to continue to meet or exceed consumer and market expectations, with a robust, user-friendly Environmental Credentials Platform.

After this co-design phase, it was decided that a web version of the SB-GAF tool was needed to give producers are more intuitive way to baseline their on-farm emissions. This tool has now been built and is available to producers for free. The data inputted into this tool pulls through to the Environmental Credentials platform to make up the carbon balance section of the final report.

Objectives

The core objective of this project was to complete the carbon platform co-design process, working with University of Queensland and the co-design facilitator. The deliverables for the carbon theme included definitions, carbon verification indicators, measuring tools/approaches, benchmarks and learning resources, and pathways for inclusion in the overarching environmental credentials platform. Technical peer review was an important component of the platform design objective. All these objectives were fully achieved.
The final objective was to support the platform developer translate the design into a usable platform for verification and learning. This occurred as much as possible, given timeframes for the CSIRO Publicly Available Specification project.

Key findings

The online codesign process combined with a “flipped learning” approach, was effective at engaging and enabling proactive participation of working group members. Delivered over a reasonable period, the process allowed time between meetings for reflection and processing of ideas, with an opportunity to revisit and fully resolve issues, before moving on. Participants were overwhelming positive about the process and the outcome they achieved (carbon environmental credentials platform design brief). The codesign process highlighted some risks associated with developing an online environmental credentials platform for carbon, including lack of suitable tools for measuring sequestration tools and the complexity of the carbon space, with limited carbon literacy or understanding. In addition to the design brief, the working group agreed on key design principles for the platform to be effective.

Benefits to industry

A key, ongoing benefit to industry from this project is that it demonstrated that a well-thought out and executed online co-design process can be incredibly effective at capturing insights from red meat producers from a diversity of businesses and locations across Australia, at no cost for travel time or expenses. This approach could be adopted by other industry programs, particularly in the extension and adoption space. This project successfully produced a design brief for the carbon theme of an online environmental credentials platform. The design brief also provided an industry viewpoint for consideration in the process of the CSIRO Publicly Available Specification development.

Given the high level of interest from consumers in both carbon and biodiversity within agricultural systems, the outcome from this project will help to secure the ability of industry to continue to meet or exceed consumer and market expectations. This project will also instill confidence in Australian grassfed beef producers that they have contributed to the purpose, scope and design of the Environmental Credentials Platform and associated learning tools, ensuring it is fit-for-purpose for industry.

MLA action

MLA will continue to maintain and improve the Environmental Credentials platform for the immediate future. This will help build a user base and demonstrate the value of the platform for producers and end users of sustainability data. MLA plan to continue to make improvements to the platform to enhance the user experience, value, and utility of the platform.

Future research

Further research will be useful on:
• evaluation of the platform some time after release
• research on market demand
• research on verification and certification
• expansion to other agricultural industries
• accuracy of satellite imagery for parts of Australia will be needed to improve the third party verified technology.