Introduction

Australia is on the cutting edge of efforts to shift to a low carbon economy. Creating climate wealth is our opportunity to “balance the earth books”. Through leadership and transformational change, businesses will create partnerships with passionate innovators, leading to a blueprint for success for generations to come.

Australia is at the forefront of innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit is good – the potential is here for a small group of innovators to lead the way in achieving significant carbon offsets in conjunction with the Carbon War Room.

One of the top working tracks is Agriculture, Food and Carbon (AFC) and some people are predicting that 50% of our produce will come from urban agriculture by 2050. The following is a summary of the AFC working track outcomes for the Creating Climate Wealth conference held in Sydney on 7th – 8th July 2011.

Agriculture, Food and Carbon (AFC) Working Track Outcomes

With a common objective of “a practical, integrated, robust resilient roadmap to get to the future efficiently, collaboratively and within agreed timeframes”, the AFC working group identified a shared vision as follows:

AFC can achieve gigaton scale in 2020 by:

• Widespread adoption of community sustainability practises that regenerate the land
• A large scale research project to improve soil condition
• Communicating the impact if we don’t change
• Giving farmers carbon for looking after soil
• To use existing farm infrastructure (farmers, graziers, crops, grasses and livestock) to improve farm productivity and sequest carbon at a gigaton scale in the near term future
• Create partnerships with farmers including all stakeholders
• Having an impact in 2 to 3 years
• Selling commercial opportunities for new income streams
• Change management practices

The AFC working group mapped the current industry, by looking at:

• System components i.e. system supply chain, scientists, universities, farmers (Corporate etc), Government, Industry associations, Entrepreneurs
• Key Players, Relationships, Challenges, Barriers, Bottlenecks, Issues
• Gaps, leverage points, opportunities, enablers

The mapping process identified three main gaps to success:

• Soil condition
• Energy balance and agriculture
• Attitudinal change

The overall approach identified by the working group identified the need for:

• A commercial enterprise generating agricultural and environmental benefits
• The Carbon For Food (C4F) campaign to engage and celebrate with stakeholders
• A high profile road show to mobilise capital

The working group established a Roadmap to Success, summarised as follows:

• Plan: Develop scalable investment plan, engage high profile C4F suppliers, prepare roadshow
• Sow: On the ground resources, marketing movement underway: hit the road
• Harvest: ROI social capital, knowledge, smart policy and international rollout

And key activities and timeframes were determined:

• 3 months: Business, Sponsors and Stake holders , Plans, Launch event
• 12 months: Audit, road show, rollout
• 3 years: social capital, carbon trading , yield, business model proven etc

Geoff Edwards, Leadership Coach

www.geoffedwards.net

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