This is a subscriber-only article
Farmers and marketers have to tell the world what they are doing inside the farm gate in relation to carbon and "make it pay", global head of agribusiness at KPMG Ian Proudfoot has said.
He told the webinar launch of the KPMG/Irish Farmers Journal 2020 Agribusiness report that farmers have to design a farm business that is resilient.
"We already have an emissions trading scheme, the price of carbon is only going one way and that’s up. People are asking what they can do to secure and earn carbon credits.
"For example in horticulture, people ask how can they redefine what an orchard looks like to sequester carbon," he said.
When it comes to marketing food, Proudfoot said most consumers are interested in the attributes and labels on the front of a pack of food.
“[It] potentially can command a value or create a premium – can carbon neutral command a premium?
“Co-ops in the US are looking at carbon-neutral farms…it’s something everyone sees as an opportunity to monetise,” he said.
He said carbon is important inside the farm gate, but also in terms of marketing.
“Unless you’re creating something that creates a point of difference, it won’t stand out to the consumer,” he said.
Regenerative farming
In New Zealand, he said there is a new industry vision and there is a clear goal of a regenerative farming system.
“We have to tell what we do to the world and make it pay. We need 20,000 farmers to be zero carbon, as quickly as possible.
“We are expecting Government to invest in water storage on farms and recognise that we need to invest a lot in tracking and tracing what’s happening on farm. If you can’t use data, the story is useless,” he said.
Ian Proudfoot of KPMG says "if you can't use data, the story is useless" in relation to the tracking and tracing of what's happening on farm. #Sustainability2050 @KPMG_Ireland pic.twitter.com/OkNY0JLQei
— Irish Farmers Journal (@farmersjournal) May 21, 2020
Practical
Carbery CEO Jason Hawkins said that Ireland has to be practical in terms of implementing changes.
He said that some have begun already, for example the Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advice Programme, but that these things take time.
“We have to be careful we don’t go jumping into too many things. There are some low hanging fruit, the MACC has some guidelines…but as a broader society there has to be an understanding that [we’re] not going to get there overnight.
“We can’t push too much, on farmers in particular, they’ll go out of business and we don’t want a food crisis,” he said.
Economic sustainability
Dale Farm CEO Nick Whelan said the processor looks at economic sustainability as a key pillar of sustainability overall.
“We have 160 farmers taking part in a three-year programme with the target of improving profitability by 2p/l. We’re measuring, on a monthly basis, the physical and financial inputs on these farms and optimising feed use per cow.
"Practical things that we look at are things like calibrating concentrate feeders in parlour, tightening calving patterns for focus, cutting dates for silage and getting silage analysed, using milk records to find the best cows to breed from, so pretty practical stuff.
"We are finding that there is quite a big delta between, let's call it, the most efficiently run farms and the less efficiently run farms. Even on our subset of 160 farms, we are seeing a delta of about 5.6p/l in profitability between the top 25% and the bottom 25%. That is quite a substantial delta."
He also said that building a 37ac solar farm to generate electricity at Dale Farm was phase one of a strategy towards carbon neutrality at the processor.
“We’re looking at being both carbon neutral and cost neutral.
“We have a 37ac solar farm. It has 18,500 solar panels and we’re reducing carbon by 1,200t/year, which is the equivalent of taking approximately 500 cars off the road.
“It supplies a significant part of energy into part of the site. We have one eye looking forward at biomass and one at targeting carbon neutrality,” he said.
SHARING OPTIONS: