Australian producers face mounting regulatory, trade and market pressure for product provenance and sustainability credentials

Global markets are placing increasing emphasis on sustainability, traceability, and ethical production.​ This strong global position comes with growing responsibility. Major export markets including the European Union, the United States, and key Asian countries are now demanding greater traceability, environmental performance, and proof of deforestation-free supply chains. Domestically, Australia’s AASB 2 climate-related financial disclosures, effective from FY25, will cascade through the agricultural supply chain, requiring verifiable data from producers.

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Key figures:

• Australia is home to more than 45,000 beef cattle enterprises, together managing over half of the nation’s agricultural land and contributing significantly to the national economy 

• Approximately 65% are engaged in the export market, supplying premium Australian beef to over 100 countries

• In 2023, over 70% of Australia’s total beef production was exported, generating more than $11 billion in export revenue

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We set out to understand how these pressures were impacting producers:

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Fragmented data and frameworks: Sustainability and traceability information is captured inconsistently across the beef supply chain and different agricultural sectors (i.e. inconsistent reporting frameworks). This causes confusion from producers who are unsure what they should be reporting on, and why it's important for them to report on it

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Rising burden: Producers are under pressure to meet growing regulatory, market, and trade requirements (e.g. EUDR, AASB2), and the burden of time consuming and duplicative reporting is a growing frustration 

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Cost and resourcing constraints: Small to medium sized producers face barriers in adopting new digital tools and reporting frameworks due to upfront costs, technical capacity, and limited resources

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Low trust and uneven value: Data ownership and equitable benefit-sharing remain unclear, making it hard to build trust and ensure all parts of the supply chain see value from sustainability and provenance data. Sustainability reporting is viewed as a nice-to-have but not yet obviously valuable to the producer undertaking the hard work of data capture and reporting