National Agriculture Traceability Grants Program - Sustainability Reporting Uplift Grant Round

The Australian Government has committed $68.4 million for Australia’s agricultural traceability systems to support forward looking innovative ideas to create new avenues for value adding, opportunities to gain access to new markets, and enhance the overall economic benefits to industry through increasing efficiency in meeting compliance obligations.

As a part of this approach, the draft National Agricultural Traceability Strategy 2023-2033 (the Strategy) was co-designed by industry and the department to align and maintain momentum with relevant stakeholders around a common vision for an enhanced national agriculture traceability-ecosystem. It is export focused and covers all agricultural commodities and products.

Traceability is the ability to follow the movement of a product through stages of production, processing and distribution (ISO 2007). In Australia, traceability is used to meet regulatory requirements, such as those for biosecurity (pest and disease control) and food safety, and to demonstrate provenance of agricultural products for export markets. Due to the breadth of agricultural industries and the range of players and requirements involved, traceability systems are a complex mixture of government requirements and industry-led accreditations.

The grant round provides the opportunity for successful applicants to uplift the agriculture sector’s data capabilities to consistently report against sustainability frameworks and meet emerging international requirements and standards.

Projects are sought that build the agriculture sector’s capabilities to reporting against multiple sustainability frameworks and emerging international requirements and standards. Increased collaboration across the sector and stakeholder groups on sustainability reporting will support the sector’s capacity to respond to regulatory pressures to maintain market access, increase export value, promote deregulatory benefits and mitigate biosecurity risks. To support alignment, projects could consider existing efforts underway for cross-commodity approaches to sustainability reporting, such as the National Farmer’s Federation Draft AASF. Projects are also sought that have the potential for cross-commodity application.