Is industry aligning with the ABSF?

Since its launch in 2017, the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework (ABSF) has been a tool for guiding the beef industry toward sustainable best practice, measuring performance across themes, priorities and indicators that matter to stakeholders and markets.

Recent research set out to address how stakeholders are engaging with the ABSF and whether they’re aligning with the themes, priorities, and indicators that it measures against.

How are stakeholders using the ABSF?

Sustainability Consultant Sarah Castine from Pinion Advisory led the review, which analysed company sustainability reports and included stakeholder surveys and interviews.

“We were trying to understand how useful the ABSF is, how stakeholders are using it, and any challenges they may have with it so that it can be adapted to meet industry needs in rapidly evolving production systems and markets,” Sarah said.

The survey showed:

• 27% of respondents align very well or completely with the ABSF
• 55% reported moderate alignment
• 15% said they do not align at all.

How stakeholders used the ABSF varied widely.

“There are a range of ways you can use this framework. Most organisations look at the themes and priority issues to inform and design their own internal monitoring and reporting,” Sarah said.

“If a business or organisation is at the beginning of their sustainability journey, it’s helpful to be able to look at the ABSF.

“Companies have reported that aligning to the ABSF has been useful to their international market access, particularly because it ladders up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals”.

Do producers use the ABSF?

When it comes to building awareness of the ABSF and its functions, Sarah said that producers have been engaged much less, and as a result, the ABSF wasn’t commonly known at a producer level.

The survey found that 57% of producers don’t have a sustainability plan in place, mainly due to limited market pressure on smaller operations.

Sarah said that those who do are often motivated by market access or certain financing options, including ‘green loans’, which is financing to support environmentally sustainable projects.

“Depending on what markets they’re selling into, having more of that sustainable reporting may become increasingly important for producers in the future,” Sarah said.

“There are real economic drivers why producers should be aligning with sustainability best practice. Sustainability drives improvements in farm efficiencies and this is good for their bottom line,” she said.

The review, while demonstrating the important role the ABSF currently plays in supporting organisations as they secure their future, also provided recommendations to ensure continued improvement.

Recommendations included tweaking, narrowing and clarifying the role of the ABSF, creating more localised benchmarks to ensure all stakeholders have something to aim for in their sustainability journey, and developing a data collection platform to assist stakeholders in collecting, storing and accessing their sustainability data.

“The ABSF has traditionally targeted the downstream end of the value chain, including bigger corporates and food retailers,” Sarah said.

The report recommends increasing engagement with, and support to producers, particularly around reductions in ‘scope 3’ emissions and investing in other on-ground initiatives.

“During my research I heard people say over and over again that if the ABSF remains focused, active and up to date, it will be a really important part of driving industry in the right direction.