Verifying sustainability credentials

Goal

To develop cost-effective and accurate sustainability credentialling of Australian agriculture and food products, underpinned by trusted digital systems.  

This will enable regulators, exporters and importing countries to verify sustainability credentials as well as other claims such as food safety and origin. 

Outcome

Our work on credentialing and verification will:

• enable industry and exporters to meet emerging sustainability requirements
• provide independent validation of sustainability credentials 
• enable and maintain access to export markets with sustainability claims backed by evidence
• build trust in the quality and sustainability credentials of Australian agricultural products
• further grow Australia's reputation for high-quality food.

The challenge and opportunity

Australia's agriculture sector increasingly needs to meet new sustainability requirements as key export markets act to reduce carbon emissions and improve sustainability. 

We are contributing scientific methods and validation to enable industry and exporters to meet these emerging sustainability requirements. This will help to retain key markets and open new ones for Australia's agricultural industries. 

We are also working with partners on data flows and governance required for cost-effective implementation of emerging sustainability frameworks. 

Our solutions

Sustainability credentials for market access

We facilitate a principle-driven approach to the design of indicators, credentials and the identification of underpinning data sources, enhancing industry stakeholders' ability to report on and create value from data streams that demonstrate sustainable practices. 

We detailed science-based credentials to underpin Meat & Livestock Australia's digital assurance system. It will enable producers to demonstrate their sustainability claims to access high-value markets and premium prices. 

We have also led ongoing greenhouse gas assessments for Australian canola to verify the product meets the European Union's targets. This ensures it is eligible to be sold into the European biofuel market. 

Environmental data infrastructure 

We are leading the development of a national digital platform that brings together a wealth of disparate data from Australia's national research organisations so that it can be used to tackle our biggest challenges in water, food, biosecurity and forensics.

Collaborators include the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Geoscience Australia and National Measurement Institute. The work is co-funded by the Australian Research Data Commons. 

Predicting place of production

We are using the environmental markers from soil and water to create isotopic fingerprints that are unique to an agricultural region and can be used to verify claims about provenance, sustainability and production methods.

As an example, we are working with the South Australian Research and Development Institute and Australian Wine Research Institute to create a wine provenance map of Australia.