Our purpose is to invest in Research, Development and Extension (RD&E) to create enduring profitability for Australian grain growers.
Most, if not all, of our investments deliver profitability or economic benefits.
Aligned with the ‘enduring’ element of our purpose, we recognise that the grains industry can’t have ongoing profitability without:
- healthy soil, water and air needed to produce crops,
- strong rural communities in which grain growers live and operate, and
- trust of domestic and international consumers, finance markets and governments.
Hence, we are committed to investing in RD&E that empowers and informs growers to enhance the environmental and social impacts of grain production.
We are proactively positioning our investment in RD&E to provide further support to growers to achieve sustainability outcomes that enhance:
- their business
- the grains industry
- the environment
- the broader community.
GRDC Sustainability Initiative
In 2022, our Board established an internal Sustainability Initiative with the primary objective of developing an overall analysis of sustainability issues and opportunities for the grains industry, and a pipeline of GRDC investments in RD&E that support increased delivery of sustainability outcomes.
Read our GRDC Sustainability Initiative (PDF).
Sustainability targets
While it is not GRDC’s role to set sustainability targets for Australian grain growers, we will support the broader industry to understand realistic sustainability metrics that can be used to monitor change. In this regard, we will work closely with ongoing work by the National Farmers’ Federation and other stakeholders in primary industries.
We will progress an RD&E investment plan that empowers growers to create enduring profitability by:
Managing the environment and social impacts of production, in particular their greenhouse gas emissions
Maintaining the natural capital (natural assets including soil, air, water and all living things) that supports their businesses
Meeting expectations of government, community and financial and consumer markets
Defining sustainability
Sustainability considers economic, environmental and social outcomes from human endeavour. These are often referred to as the triple bottom line or the three P's:
The Australian grains industry has excellent ‘clean, green and ethical’ credentials, with high levels of community trust. For example, recent work has highlighted our low greenhouse gas emissions intensity relative to international producers (greenhouse gas emissions).
Improving the ability of grain growers and industry to demonstrate the credentials of their production systems will support ongoing market and financial access, present opportunities for differentiation and leverage our strengths.
GRDC Investment
GRDC investment aims to enhance economic sustainability and deliver environmental outcomes.
A report commissioned by GRDC in 2022 found around a quarter of our current investment portfolio, or 162 investments totalling $202 million, were identified as having a direct environmental impact if the outputs and practices developed were adopted by growers. Most of these investments are focused on improved management of weeds, diseases and pests, reduced reliance on pesticides, biosecurity and, to a lesser extent, enhancing soil health.
In addition, a significant proportion of investments have indirect benefits to environmental outcomes. Many of our investments contribute (either directly or indirectly) to social capital, in terms of creating employment, infrastructure, training and capacity development and enhancing community trust.
A focus on sustainability
To ensure RD&E is directed to areas of greatest need and impact, GRDC will continue to invest in four priority areas for sustainability, in addition to existing work on crop protection/reduced reliance on pesticides/biosecurity, and soil health.
The priority areas will be used to develop investments that tackle sustainability challenges. This renewed emphasis on sustainability is reflected in the new priorities for the 2023-2028 RD&E Plan, especially the ‘Thrive for Future Generations’ pillar.
The Australian Grains Baseline and Mitigation Assessment report by CSIRO (2022) found that the Australian grains industry produces grain with low emissions intensity (kg CO2-eq per tonne grain) compared to most other grain producing regions and countries. However, the report concluded that, by 2030, it is unlikely Australian grain can reduce its overall GHG emissions to zero using current farming systems and practices without reducing production.
Grain growers need RD&E that enables profitable and sustainable operations in a world that has an enhanced focus on reduced emissions intensity and increasingly on ‘net zero’ goals. The reality is Australian producers will produce grain in a ‘towards net zero’ world.
We aim to deliver research focused on reducing the emissions intensity of Australian grains. This could include RD&E aimed at:
- providing regular updates on the emissions from the Australian grains industry and comparisons internationally;
- creating the evidence base for improved greenhouse gas accounting by verifying the use of existing emissions factors to Australian grain production;
- reducing indirect emissions associated with crop inputs (e.g., fertilisers and pesticides) through R&D and commercialisation investments to lower upstream emissions;
- improving nitrogen use efficiency, such as controlled-release fertilisers that better match the timing of nitrogen release to plant need, decision support tools for nitrogen application, and digitally enabled precision fertiliser applications;
- exploring farming system interventions that increase yield and reduce carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other soil emissions; and
- validating the potential impact of control traffic farming and precision agriculture to underpin changes to the accounting methods and emissions mitigation strategies.
In addition, this area could look to deliver appropriate business tools and skills that assist grain producers to:
- analyse options for participation in markets for generation of Australian Carbon Credit Units or other private market offset arrangements for profitable purposes, such as offsetting production emissions or the sale of credits;
- participate in premium markets based on low emissions intensity grain production.
Working in close collaboration with the greenhouse gas mitigation area, we aim to deliver RD&E on:
- increasing soil carbon in the grain production system, including interactions with the nitrogen cycle, the role of organic amendments and soil amelioration, and dual purpose or pasture cropping in the farming system;
- understanding the benefits from enhancing soil biological activity, both in terms of soil biota contributing to soil carbon and health, and biotic stresses to crop production; and
- collaborate with other primary industries to develop a soil health index to monitor soil condition.
In addition, the most appropriate approaches to offset emissions on farms may be developed, such as:
- research on ‘Mosaic Farming’ – this might involve improving farm profitability by not cropping poor performing parts of the farm which often generate negative gross margins and redeploy that land as vegetation-based carbon sinks, or long-term pasture.
An opportunity exists for GRDC to support identification of market drivers for the creation of environmental benefits on farm. This includes:
- carbon markets;
- emerging markets for eco-systems services and biodiversity;
- sustainable procurement frameworks and premium created by food and beverage manufacturers and the reduced risk of discounts for lack of compliance;
- production co-benefits in terms of increased yield, reduced input costs and improved risk management.
We aim to deliver research potentially including:
- analysis into farming system practices required to deliver against market drivers, trends and opportunities;
- identifying environmental benefits from farm operations, either as win-win or trade-off opportunities for production and environmental outcomes; and
- identifying R&D to allow and drive grain growers to innovate against the proposed benefits of agriculture that actively seeks to enhance farm natural capital.
Social indicators provide a measure of change in the social and human capital of the grains industry, its communities, and the broader society. While contribution to regional economies is often used as the indicator of the benefit of farming on society, the impacts of GRDC investment can be much broader.
Our existing Capacity and Ability (C&A) Framework supports the grains industry in accessing highly capable people and appropriate infrastructure in an environment that supports innovation and research for impact.
The initial effort for this focus area will be to map out a plan for GRDC to better target social impacts in its RD&E planning, investments and reporting. Initial priorities could be to:
- explore previous work to identify and articulate any social and human capital impacts of selected investments;
- create opportunities to enhance our reporting of impact on and investment in social and human capital.
An initial project is looking at the impact of our research on the socio-economic resilience of rural and regional communities. It seeks to answer the following questions:
- what is the link between agricultural output and the resilience of rural communities?
- how does our research create social benefit for agricultural communities through its research and development activities?
In 2022, GRDC commissioned Spiegare Consulting to review the status of sustainable fertiliser production (particularly green hydrogen, green ammonia and green urea) and identify the potential for GRDC to influence or support upstream technology development in this space.
To read the full report, view the Sustainable fertilisers for Australian growers factsheet (PDF).
Next steps
Our RD&E Plan 2023-28 is the key document that guides our investment. Sustainability is a critical component of our new plan.
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