Stakeholders from across the Australian sheep and wool industry met in Melbourne on Wednesday for the inaugural meeting of the Sheep Sustainability Framework (SSF) consultative committee.
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The meeting included a mix of producers and representatives of leading advocacy sheep and agriculture organisations and businesses in the processing, finance and retail sectors.
SSF steering group chair, Scott Williams, said the meeting provided an important forum to share framework developments and seek feedback.
"This is an important milestone in the [SFF's] evolution and our work towards better understanding opportunities, challenges and impacts in key areas such as environmental health, animal care, economic resilience, and people and communities," Dr Williams said.
"Having such strong representation from across industry meant we could engage in a well-considered discussion of priority issues capturing a variety of perspectives from across the value chain."
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The meeting included presentations from experts including a visualisation of vegetative cover for sheep grazing regions from managing director of Cibo Labs Phil Tickle.
Managing director at Integrity Ag and Environment Steve Wiedemann also presented on the determination of emissions intensity of sheep meat and wool.
"These presentations delivered valuable insights into how industry is tracking, including the first On-Farm Insights Report which presents relevant data from the recently completed National Producer Survey and provides important benchmarking data for the SSF," Dr Williams said.
"It enables the Australian sheep and wool industry to understand where we are currently sitting in terms of sustainability on-farm and will allow industry to track progress in the adoption of key sustainability measures".
"This data also supports industry in demonstrating it has a clear pathway towards continual improvement and is striving to be the most sustainable in the world."
The SSF is aiming to define sustainable sheep production in the country and will measure industry performance against relevant indicators..
The framework released their first annual report at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo in July, and showed data of the sustainability performance of the nation's sheep and wool industry, including looking after workers, the environment and financial resiliancy.
