Australian ag not as clean and green in global eyes as it thinks: Su McCluskey

Countries like Ireland and New Zealand have overtaken Australia as the kings of this space, largely because they have a united message. If Australian agriculture doesn't quickly get on board with the single voice strategy, the emerging gap will be very hard to catch up, she says.

This very serious message was delivered by Ms McCluskey at Beef Australia in Rockhampton this month, where issues like the European Union's prescriptive trade plans were a hot topic.

Ms McCluskey's is now in the third year of what is a first-of-its-kind role, where she both advocates for Australian agriculture in global markets and brings back what she is hearing to share with farming industries on home soil.

It's a ministerial appointment, which gives her access to meetings and people that agriculture industry representatives rarely get, but she is not a government employee so she has a degree of free rein.

From the World Food Forum in Rome and an international sustainability event in Paris to a methane measurement event in Ireland and COP28 in Dubai, her schedule over the past year has been hectic and, as such, her insights were in high demand at Beef 2024.

A beef producer herself for more than three decades, with a farm near Yass in NSW, Ms McCluskey said it was so disappointing to hear how Australian farmers were perceived overseas.

"While we know that we look after our land and our animals and have traded on our clean and green image for a long time, this is not necessarily how other countries see us," she said.

"The EU and the UK in particular think that we don't have good animal welfare practices and use chemicals and fertilisers indiscriminately. Much of this is based on the fact that our farming practices are different and so our management practices need to be different."

Her response to this is the argument that no one size fits all and as long as we are committed to best practice animal welfare and sustainability outcomes, then how we get there needs to be flexible to allow for different production systems and environmental conditions.

"Unfortunately, this is not how the EU sees it and their prescriptive approaches have the ability to influence global standards to the detriment of Australian farmers. So there is much we need to do in telling our story in mainstream audiences, but also to work with like-minded economies like Canada and Latin America, to collectively push back on the ideology that we see coming from Europe," Ms McCluskey said.

"At the same time, we are not perfect and in a rapidly moving world our farmers will need to be even more nimble and adaptive, particularly when it comes to demonstrating our sustainability credentials."

She said data, measurement and reporting would become more and more critical to backing up what was happening in practice on Australian farms with hard evidence. Agtech and artificial intelligence would be critical - so too being transparent and articulate.

But above all that, we must take a Team Australia approach, Ms McCluskey believes.

"Domestically we tend to do our research and development by commodity, concentrating for example, on grains, red meat or dairy, but we need to think bigger picture when we are on the global stage," she said.

"We trade with other markets as a country and we must be giving a consistent message externally. If we don't present as a single strong voice for Australian agriculture, the fractures and inconsistencies can be used against us and this makes us more vulnerable for other countries to pick us off."

She said Ireland and NZ had united, consistent messaging backed with tangible examples and that was how they had overtaken Australia on the clean, green reputation.

There was no question the biggest thing globally for farming was sustainability - across the climate, the environment, biodiversity, animal welfare, how we treat our people and economic management, Ms McCluskey said.

"The global language is ESG (environmental, social, governance) and how what we do aligns with the UN's sustainable development goals," she said.

"We now have legislation around financial reporting on climate and this will flow down the supply chain to farmers directly. Work is being done on nature-related reporting and so nature-based solutions and measurement of natural capital will become more important."

The bottom line - additional measurement and data collection will inevitably come for farmers and finding a way to align this with existing reporting and compliance will be important.

Geopolitical factors would also be an ongoing issue, she said.

"While the current conflicts may seem a long distance away, we can't ignore what may happen in our region - for example what the impacts in Asia may be following the US elections," she said.

"The Indo-Pacific will also bring other challenges, including the direct impacts of climate and how this affects our agricultural industries, such as the impact of workforce."