Why agriculture needs to think at landscape scale, with Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi

0:02Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: Hello and welcome to Ag Tech So What? Brought to you by Tenacious Ventures. I'm Sarah Nolette. Who should pay for making agriculture more sustainable and our farming landscapes more resilient? At the moment, a lot of the responsibility, cost and risk sits with farmers. But what if there was another way?

0:20Dr. Maddie Mitchell: Farmers are actually paid for implementing the measure on their land, so they're not actually paid based on the outcome. And I think that's quite important to highlight because the outcome is not always within the control of the farmer.

0:36Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: That's Ebony Greaves-Zwingy, founder and CEO of Sea Oak Consulting, referring to an initiative that's gaining traction in Europe and now coming to Australia called Landscape Enterprise Networks, or LENS. Ebony is based in regional Victoria and has been helping bring LENS to Australia. Lens brings together farmers, businesses, and other organizations to co-invest in improving the health and resilience of entire landscapes. And in this episode, our own Dr. Maddie Mitchell speaks to Ebony to unpack how the model works. She also asks why it could offer a different approach to funding on farm sustainability, including how technology and better farm data could help turn environmental credentials into real commercial value for farmers.

1:17Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: So here's Ebony chatting with Maddie.

1:20Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I was previously working in a senior leadership role at Deloitte for around seven years prior to starting SeaOak. And I was doing some really incredible work in the ocean marine technology space, doing really cool work in the kind of offshore wind, wave energy, tidal energy space, but also some really cool work around seaweed for things like carbon sequestration, ocean-based carbon sequestration. And for me, I live in the Victorian high country, which is at least four and a half hours away from the closest ocean. And while I was really enjoying the work that I was doing and the impact that we were having in what you would call a new and emerging market, my passion and my heart really laid in the kind of more land-based ag sectors because it's a little bit closer to my heart in terms of where I live and the types of farms and regional rural sectors that we have out here.

2:18Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So I found myself for a little while before starting Sea Oak, constantly thinking, how can I take all of this incredible work that I'm doing in the marine and ocean sector and start to apply some of that to the land-based ag sectors? And that was partially how the idea of Sea Oak Consulting was born. The name Sea Oak, it's a type of seaweed. So a little bit of a play on words there. And then I think for me, the other reason for starting Sea Oak as well was because at At the time, I was spending a lot of time in city offices, corporate boardrooms, et cetera. And as a rural woman myself, I was becoming increasingly aware of how decisions were made in those rooms.

3:01Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And there was very little work that was being done to actually genuinely consult with regional rural communities, industries, farms. and these decisions would have significant flow on impacts to these regional rural communities and the farming sector and I guess for a long time I sat at the other end of that more on the corporate side and I was finding myself thinking I really need to be at the end that's actually based in the regions in rural Victoria where I am supporting the industry and the sector from the ground up so they were the two main drivers for starting Seoc.

3:40Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: Your current work really sits at that intersection of agriculture, climate risk and supply chains. What do you think we're getting wrong about how we currently approach sustainability in agriculture?

3:50Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I think there has been some really incredible work done over the years in building out Australia's environmental markets, like our carbon credit markets, our biodiversity offset scheme, our nature repair market. I do think they have the potential to be really valuable for Australia. But at the same time, I think they have been developed in a way that is not necessarily inclusive of small to medium sized farmers. And so adoption is a really big challenge. And so on the one hand, there's a huge push, particularly from government. There's a really big push to have more and more farmers participating in these environmental markets and demonstrating sustainable farming operations and carbon neutral farming operations and things like that.

4:38Dr. Maddie Mitchell: But the incentives are just not there for the farmers. So I think that's probably one of the big things. The other thing that I would say that we are currently getting wrong right across the industry is most of the risk and the responsibility is falling onto farmers. So if you think about something like landscape resilience or supply chain stability, you think immediately of the farmers that are the ones out there raising the cattle, growing the crops, whatever it might be. And the responsibility is more often than not falling onto their heads to manage their land as sustainably as possible. But with that comes a lot of cost and a lot of risk.

5:21Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And so there are a lot of organisations along the whole supply chain, the whole value chain that are benefiting from the good work that the farmers are doing, but all the risk and the cost is generally falling onto the farmer's head. And I think that that's really unbalanced. And I also think that that does deter a lot of farmers from actually maintaining or implementing more sustainable practices across their farms because they're having to pay for it. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort. And they're often not supported.

5:53Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: No, I agree. I've seen that. Let's talk about what might be going right or what could go right. And that is really a segue into this Landscape Enterprise Network that you are now working with. So to begin with, what is a Landscape Enterprise Network and where has the concept come from?

6:10Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So Landscape Enterprise Networks, and from here on in, I'll refer to it as Lent. It's a bit easier. Landscape Enterprise Networks was developed by a company called 3Kiel back in 2021. one. Pre-Kill is now Ferro Science. They've recently been acquired by Ferro Science in the UK. So Lens is a nature-based solutions co-investment model that brings together different organizations from across the supply chain, the value chain, to co-fund on-farm measures that help to build resilience across the farms, also across the landscapes and the supply chains. And it has scaled really quickly since 2021. It's been really successful.

6:55Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So it's predominantly an insetting mechanism. First and foremost, the important thing to note is that Lens is not another environmental market. It's very different to your carbon credit markets and biodiversity markets and things like that. So there's never any credits generated or traded. It's predominantly supply chain insetting. And since 2021, Lens has already scaled to 12 regions globally. So right across the EU and the UK. There's now 12 regions up and running. There's been approximately$50 million of private sector funding and has been channeled directly to the farmers. And that's funds that have been paid to the farmers for managing their land in a more sustainable way.

7:37Dr. Maddie Mitchell: The average farmer contract for Lens, so Lens upgrades on annual trade cycles and the farmers have a lot of flexibility to be able to opt in and opt out each trade cycle, which is typically 12 months. And the average overseas that farmers are being paid for implementing a very broad range of nature-based measures on their land is around$60 ,000 a year. So that's fairly significant when you compare that with something like an accused credit or something like that. That's funds directly going into the farmer's back pocket on an annual basis. And one of the other key differences with lands is that the farmers are actually paid for implementing the measure on their land.

8:19Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So they're not actually paid based on the outcome. And I think that's quite important to highlight because the outcome is not always within the control of the farmer. So if you're thinking about carbon credits, as an example, got farms that go into extended periods of drought and you've got bushfires and things like that, which can all undo great work in the carbon sequestration space, though those outcomes are not always fixed and they're not always within the control of the farmer, which is why Lens is so much more flexible because they're actually being paid just to do the measure itself. So there's a lot less risk that the farmer is taking on.

8:57Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And then just coming back to scales, as of 2025, there were 430 farms across EU and the UK participating in Lens and they're participating across 229 ,000 hectares of land so fairly large. If we just think about Australia for a minute, Landscape Enterprise Networks is in the process of being set up in Australia for the first time. It's actually the first Lens region to be set up outside of EU and the UK which is really exciting. So CEREC's role within that, CEREC is the national operator of landscape enterprise networks. So our role will be to establish each new lands region industry, but actually oversee the operations in each of those lands regions as well.

9:42Dr. Maddie Mitchell: At the moment, we're working on three lands regions over the next couple of years. So in early 2027, we've got the Hunter and Mid North Coast New South Wales lands region that will kick off with the first trade cycle happening from early next year. And then not far behind that in the 2028 trade cycle, we'll have the New South Wales Murray River Arena Lens Region set up. And within the same year, we'll also be South East Queensland Lens Region as well. So we're definitely expecting to see Lens grow in Australia as rapidly as it has grown overseas. And already we're just getting so much momentum and interest from right across the sector, from cohorts of farms in different regions, coming to us really interested about setting up a Lens region for their farms through to the supply chain partners, the supermarket retail brands and things like that.

10:39Dr. Maddie Mitchell: Also government, we're getting lots of different pockets of government coming to us now, asking about Lens regions or put land care groups and NRM groups and things into that category as well. I think one other key thing, so we keep talking about the carbon market. So LENS will fund all types of measures on farms across soil health, biodiversity. Carbon is definitely one of them, which falls within the climate mitigation category. They'll fund measures across animal health and welfare, farmer well-being as well. And so it is really quite broad the types of things that farmers can get funding for and the types of impact that LENS has in each region is very much not just focused on carbon.

11:20Dr. Maddie Mitchell: and cupboard is definitely one of the things that they focus on and fund, but it's just one of many things.

11:26Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: Yeah, it does sound more holistic and you do need those different pieces to be working together. I also noticed that, now I'm going to forget the terminology you used, but there's an element too of meeting the farmers where they are. So there's kind of like if you're more early stages, it might be implementing the practice, but then if you're an innovator too, because I think some of the stuff we've seen as well with some of the carbon or some of the tree planting programs is that the farmers who've already been doing these practices feel like they've missed out because they don't fit that additionality.

11:56Dr. Maddie Mitchell: Yeah, you're absolutely right. You've hit the nail on the head and we talk about this a lot as well. So Lens has three funding pathways that are available to farmers. The first is the obvious one, which is the funding for measures. And typically that funding is reserved for farmers in what we would call the onboarding and engaged stage. and there's a very large database of measures that they can get funding for. The second funding pathway that's available to farmers is the resilience pathway. So that's for farmers that are already doing really great work on their land. They may have already been doing it for many years or maybe they've just started doing it but they can actually apply for funding for the maintenance and upkeep of those measures and interventions.

12:40Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And then the third funding pathway is the innovation pathway. So that's for farmers who are wanting to trial something different and new on their land and they can get funding for all types of things. One of the examples we're looking at at the moment to put into that category is virtual fencing. So, yeah, there are kind of three buckets of funding that farmers can access. So I mentioned with the first being the measures funding, that's more for the farmers in the onboarding and engaged stages. So, you know, maybe there are lots of opportunities for them to improve what they're currently doing across their operation in terms of land management.

13:18Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And then the second tier is advanced and leading. So that's, again, for the farmers that are kind of already doing a lot of these measures, perhaps for several years already. And then they could get the funding to maintain and upkeep those measures. So it is quite diverse. I like the analogy meeting farmers where they are. I think that's really important. And I think too, part of that is inclusivity. I'll keep coming back to the Accus market. It's very much focused around attracting the kind of bigger, perhaps more corporate side of farms. And it's not always available to small, medium-sized farms for a broad range of reasons.

13:57Dr. Maddie Mitchell: Could be because they don't meet the land size. It could be because the farmers are afraid to enter into 25-year contracts. That's a fairly large contract to consider. So Lens is very much operating at scale and it's aggregating the farms and the outcomes across the whole landscape.

14:16Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: So if Lens then changes the question from what can one farmer do to what could a whole landscape achieve, what then becomes possible at the scale that isn't really possible through individual farm projects?

14:28Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I think the main thing is access to funding. So for a farmer to go out and implement some of these measures on their own, it will cost them money. And what we're doing through Lens is stacking investment from different supply chain partners or value chain partners. But Lens is actually aggregating those investors together and stacking that investment across farms. So in most scenarios, the farms are actually tapping into funding from multiple funders. And I think that's the really big benefit through Lens when we're talking about the landscape scale. So that's from a farmer's perspective, but also from the funder's perspective, or as we call them within the Lens governance structure, we call them impact partners.

15:15Dr. Maddie Mitchell: if they were to go out and implement these types of programs alone the cost of that is going to be significant but when you are bringing together lots of organizations who are co-funding outcomes within that region they all share the cost of that so they're equally sharing the risk and equally sharing the cost of not only paying the farmers to do the work but they're also sharing the cost of operating the program within each of those regions as well so I think that's the really big thing that I think about when I think about Lens at scale. But then obviously there's the actual landscape outcomes side of things.

15:54Dr. Maddie Mitchell: You can have more of a coordinated effort for some of these outcomes. And I'll give one example. So we received a grant from the New South Wales Government Department of Climate Change at the start of this year to establish the first Lens region in Hunter and Mid North Coast. And there's some fairly ambitious targets that have been set with that. So this is part of the Low Carton Landscapes Grant Program. And the main two targets are, I think it's 88 ,000 hectares of land that we're targeting. So outcomes across 88 ,000 hectares of land and approximately 500 ,000 tonnes of CO2 abated or sequestered within a period of time as well.

16:36Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So that's very much at the landscape scale. And yeah, so part of what we're doing specifically for the Hunter and Mid-North Coast is looking at how we can achieve those outcomes within the farms that are already kind of operating across that. We definitely do have the carbon target because of the Low Carbon Landscapes Grant Program funding, but we're also working with funding partners that have specific outcomes at a catchment scale around water quality as an example. And so they're looking at channeling funding into farms that are within particular catchment areas and opportunities for fencing to keep cattle out of waterways and improving soil health so that you're reducing nutrient runoff into waterways and things like that.

17:20Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So we're definitely going to be seeing some significant impacts through Lens over the next couple of years.

17:27Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: I'm interested in your thoughts on how well the lens concept translates into the Australian context.

17:34Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So there's been lots of areas where we have found we've needed to adapt lenses model specifically for Australia and it's not just the model itself it's actually things like the measures that will be funded. So our farms are quite different over in Australia, our landscapes are quite different in Australia. So the types of measures that would be funded on farms in the EU and the UK don't directly translate over to Australia. So that's one area that we've needed to adapt is making sure that the measures that are funded through Lens are fit for purpose for Australia and likely to have material outcomes and impacts on farms.

18:09Dr. Maddie Mitchell: The other part of that is what we're currently doing with the livestock sector, which is adapting the resilience pathway to more specifically suit livestock farms. One of the big opportunities that we saw in the early days for Lens in Australia was the ability to channel private sector funding into existing landscape and regional priorities and initiatives. And so we have been engaging in a lot of depth with different landscape groups, with local land services, with NRM regions Australia to make sure that the measures that we're funding and the outcomes that we're seeking to get through Lens can line up as closely as possible to work that's already being done in the region.

18:55Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And in extending on that, part of the model that we've adapted for Australia as well is that in each LENS region, there will be region-specific roles. So that would be your regional LENS coordinators. So they're responsible for the on-the-ground delivery of LENS in each region, supporting the farmers that are participating in LENS. There's regional farm advisors, farm data collection partners as well. And we're looking at opportunities to have a model where land care groups are actually delivering LENS programs in each of these regions because who better than land care groups? They have extensive farmer networks and know the landscape better than anybody.

19:32Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I might just touch on one other, which is less advanced at this stage, but it's definitely something that we have started working on, which is around a new impact pillar for LENS, which is called First Nations. and what we're looking at doing in the future, probably not the first trade cycle in 2027, it will probably be the second trade cycle in 2028. We'll be looking at building out that new impact pillar that has certain metrics that we can track from a First Nations cultural land management perspective and the expectation won't be that all farmers participating in lands will do all of these things or get funding for these types of measures.

20:11Dr. Maddie Mitchell: The intention is actually that there's a bit of a First Nations specific LENS program that's happening in each of these regions. So if you have a First Nations farm or if you have a First Nations landholder, there are certain measures that they can get funding for and it will be measured, reported in a slightly different way as well. So we know that that's potentially going to be really valuable for LENS. And also if you think about from a corporate funding perspective, we know a lot of these corporate funders have these like reconciliation action plans and the opportunity to incorporate that into Lens and have Lens help them deliver on some of those goals is really valuable.

20:48Dr. Maddie Mitchell: But that's just a little less advanced at this stage. So I think that part of Lens will probably be online from 2028.

20:55Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: In terms of diversity and inclusion, I can see with the Lens project, there's quite a focus on improving access for rural women to be part of it. And so just curious about what that looks like and why is it important to you?

21:08Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So as a ruling woman myself, one of the big things that I was driven by when I first started Sea Oak, and I didn't touch on this at the very start, was that I wanted to create meaningful career opportunities for as many women as possible. and being a you know rural business we definitely have that opportunity through all kinds of different roles within the sea oak business itself but now we have this entirely new opportunity through our role as the operator of of lens and what we have developed is a leadership program called the she oak environmental leadership program it's a little bit of a play on words Sea oak I mentioned is a type of seaweed.

21:55Dr. Maddie Mitchell: That's the main name of our business, but shea oak, S-H-E, is a type of tree. So that program will be launching from early 2027 and we will be onboarding the first cohort of participants from early 2027. And the intention is that those three rural women that we choose will actually be embedded into the CO team for a period of 12 months. And they will be helping to co-deliver aspects of the lens programs in each of these three lens regions that I spoke about a little bit earlier. And they'll be learning all kinds of skills around stakeholder engagement. So this is real life projects that they'll be working on.

22:37Dr. Maddie Mitchell: They'll be getting exposure working with government, with land care groups, with technical advisors, with a really broad group of stakeholders. They'll get experience coordinating programs as well. They'll get experience actually going out onto the farms and helping to collect data for each of the farms participating in Lens. They'll get to shadow the technical advisors and get much more familiar with how the farming advisors work in these types of environments. So we see this as a really valuable opportunity to be uplifting the capabilities of rural women in each of these farming operations where Lens is being set up.

23:14Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And the intention is they may go on to take on specific roles within Lens post the leadership program. So it's a 12 month program. Some of them may very well go on to actually take on Lens roles within those regions. But more broadly, it's equipping them with skills to go out and work in other advisory businesses and things like that.

23:37Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: That's exciting. That's a real long-term immersive experience for them.

23:42Dr. Maddie Mitchell: Absolutely. Yeah. And they'll actually get paid as a trainee as well. So it's not a volunteer position.

23:49Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: That's very important too. So there's an increasing demand for farmers to provide this sustainability and traceability data. So where do you see the opportunity for that data to create value rather than becoming a compliance burden?

24:03Dr. Maddie Mitchell: Yeah, so I think the biggest challenge with MRV at the moment is it's really expensive. There are not a lot of tools out there that enable MRV to be done at relatively low cost. And that presents a pretty big barrier for the farmers for the most part, because it is actually the farmers that are paying for the MRV. So I think the first big opportunity is investing in either new MRV technology or investing in existing MRV technology to be able to get more of a scalable solution because the MRV technology is definitely the trust layer in all of these projects. One of the opportunities that we've been focusing on with Lens as well is how we can incorporate emerging technologies and methodologies into Lens and doing so in a way that actually benefits the rest of the agriculture industry.

25:01Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And I'll give a couple of examples of that. The first one is we're looking at opportunities to trial asparagopsis being incorporated into livestock grazing operations at scale. up until this point and even at this point most of the trials have been done within controlled feedlot environments and it has been very difficult to conduct on farm trials within like grazing systems so we're looking at incorporating methane measurement technologies like accent and zelp just as a couple of examples to actually you know trial first of all how the asparagopsis holds up in those outdoor environments, but also what that translates to in terms of methane measurement, because, you know, it's all fine and dandy to say, yeah, it's, you know, it's proven within a feedlot environment that asparagopsis reduces methane, but actually getting the farmers to incorporate asparagopsis into their operations is a whole other thing.

26:03Dr. Maddie Mitchell: you need to be able to actually quantify it. And beyond that, you need to be able to actually tie it to a benefit for the producer as well. So I think there's a pretty severe lack of tying some of these things to whether it's productivity uplift in the farm, whether it's the farmer having access to different, more premium markets because they're doing a particular thing on their farm. The other example of ag tech that we're looking at within Lens as well is virtual fencing. So using virtual fencing to support things like rotational grazing, cell grazing, but also looking at opportunities to use virtual fencing to limit cattle access to waterways and things like that too.

26:43Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So we're very much looking at new and emerging technologies and methodologies and the opportunity to be incorporating some of that and trialing some of that at scale within Lens Farms. Lens itself has a very sophisticated and what many would call world-leading monitoring reporting verification framework that underpins the whole Lens model. And that's aligned to the SAI Regenerating Together framework, the SAI platform. It's also aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science-Based Targets Initiative as well. So it's very robust. Coming back to adapting Lens for Australia as well, what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago, even the technologies that Lens is using overseas for their MRV are not available in Australia.

27:33Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So we're going through the process right now of engaging new farm data collection partners in Australia. And some of those will actually bring their own technology. Some of them have in-house technologies. there was one technology that I thought was very cool not specifically related to lens but certainly related to natural capital more broadly and its environmental DNA kit I just thought that was the most incredible thing ever you know being able like as a farmer to go out onto your farm have a little test tube and put a little bit of soil in it or collect some water from one of your dams and send it in for a hundred dollars and you just get this incredible list of all of the different species and biodiversity in that particular area that you took the sample.

28:15Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I just thought that was incredible. I think there's so many opportunities for ag tech within the natural capital space, but I also think there's so many opportunities for Lens to be working with some of these technologies over the next couple of years too. Yeah, that's good to hear. And I agree

28:30Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: sometimes when you actually contract the biodiversity, or I mean, we do bird lists and things, it can be quite exciting and sometimes mind-blowing. One of the other questions that comes up a lot is who should actually own this farm level data and then who should benefit from it as well.

28:44Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I think the first part of that is very easy. Farmers should always own their data. I don't think anyone else should own farmer data. And just to be very clear in the context of landscape enterprise networks as well. So the farmers always own their data. The monitoring reporting verification happens on an annual basis. The farms always get their data. The funding partners never get access to farmer data it's always aggregated at the whole landscape scale so data is always aggregated for every single farm participating in lens in that region and it's all de-identified so the farmers always ultimately own their data the question around who benefits that's a that's something that we've been trying to solve in several different ways you mentioned a little bit earlier traceability and I haven't touched on that at all SEOG recently released a public case study, which was called our Farm Sustainability and Traceability Pilot Case Study.

29:43Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So what we did with that is we traced on-farm sustainability claims and credentials across the supply chain in seven different countries. There was just one producer participating in the pilot, but that producer had a fairly extensive supply chain all around the world. So that enabled us to get the scale of the pilot. So we're hoping to roll that out next to the whole beef industry and then beyond that, looking at rolling it out to other agricultural commodities. But coming back to the point around fragmented data and farmers actually having their data in a way that's actually meaningful for banks and insurers and supply chain partners, clients, things like that.

30:23Dr. Maddie Mitchell: What we've built into this platform is the ability for the farmer to export annual sustainability reports. And the data is, I think there's 155 farm level sustainability metrics that we're tracking on the farm. And right now within the pilot, most of those are manual data entry. But where we want to get to in the next stage of that is predominantly automated. So building the API integrations to actually meet the farmer where they are. So actually building the API integrations to collect that data from whatever system and software the farmer is using and then bring that into this platform and organise it in a way against the ABSF, the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework.

31:08Dr. Maddie Mitchell: That obviously doesn't solve the challenge of who benefits from that because it's still at this stage entirely up to banks and insurers whether they want to do something with that data. But what I will say is one of the main partners that we're working with on that project is ACMEA Farm Insurance. And one of the things that we have been exploring more broadly for the agriculture industry is if farmers could present this type of data to them, what that would actually mean. And if they can prove that they are taking steps to mitigate all kinds of risks across their operation, whether that can translate to access to different insurance products or reduced insurance premiums.

31:48Dr. Maddie Mitchell: So that's very much a work in progress, but that's another way that we're tackling this challenge. Yes, interesting.

31:55Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: And that project, one of the interesting findings is that the sustainability credentials can influence purchasing decisions, but that doesn't replace quality and price. And so what can you infer from them about where sustainability actually sits in the commercial value proposition?

32:12Dr. Maddie Mitchell: There has been a lot of research and a lot of studies done and product quality and price will always, I think personally, will always win out over sustainability. But what we did find, so I think we had around 800 scams, the QR code, and about 100 people left feedback from different countries in different parts of the supply chain. And the feedback was very consistent that for products that already meet quality and price, sustainability was almost the deciding factor. So, you know, if you have 10 beef products from 10 separate beef producers and they're all similar quality and they're all similar price, what we found is that if there is one of those producers that can demonstrate sustainability in whatever that means for their operation, Sustainability is a really broad term, whether they can prove emissions reductions associated with that product or whether they can prove incredible animal welfare associated with that or whether they can prove water related things.

33:17Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And that was pretty consistent right across the supply chain. So I don't think anytime soon we're going to see sustainability surpass product quality or price. But I think there's a really clear message there for producers that if they are going above and beyond and they can demonstrate and prove that they're going above and beyond in the sustainability side of things, then it can actually give them access to new markets and it will separate them and differentiate them to all of the other competitors out there that compete on exactly the same things. There is a lot of technology being developed

33:53Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: to measure carbon biodiversity, social health, those kinds of things. And you did mention the challenge around the kind of cost and scalability of some of the technologies. I just wanted to ask whether there's anything else that you think that technology is missing or needs to do better to make this work in a scalable way for farmers?

34:12Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I think the scalable aspect is a big thing. So I think the technology is there, honestly. I think it's all there. I think there's some really incredible technology in the Australian market and the global markets around monitoring, reporting, verification. I think the consistent challenge is the price of it and I don't know how to solve that other than finding ways to make it more scalable and making it more inclusive for small to medium-sized farms to actually be able to access it, I think would be the big thing. In terms of the gaps, and there may very well be some great technologies out there that help farmers make better decisions, more informed decisions.

34:57Dr. Maddie Mitchell: From our perspective, managing risks is building resilience and I think there's not a lot of tools and technologies out there So yes, it might solve a specific challenge for a farmer. Maybe they need to, I don't know, measure how much fertilizer they're applying year on year or something like that. But a lot of these platforms don't incorporate the risk element to it. The risk mitigation and being proactive about risk mitigation seems to be a bit of a lagging area in the technologies. And I think that's potentially a really big opportunity as well.

35:32Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: So if we fast forward 10 years, what would a genuinely functioning agricultural sustainability system look like for the farmer, the supply chain and the landscape?

35:41Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I think currently the biggest gap and the biggest opportunity in the Australian agriculture industry is looking at things from a whole of landscape scale. I think all of the great work that's been done around the existing and new environmental markets in Australia, I think they definitely have a place. but I think that they're very limiting and I think that the barriers are very real for producers that are kind of leading them to not want to get involved in those markets. And I would say in 10 years time if I just think about it from landscape enterprise networks I would like to see multiple lens regions fully established around Australia maybe within 10 years we've got 20 regions up and running.

36:32Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I would like to see hundreds of farmers participating in the Lens progress. And I would like to see the risk and reward shed more fairly across the supply chain for taking care of the land, managing the land more sustainably, keeping those supply chains resilient and stable. And I absolutely am confident that what we're doing through Lens in 10 years time is going to be achieving some of these landscape scale outcomes. and I think that's what's needed and I think there has been for many years a really big gap in the agriculture industry where it's not being looked at from a landscape scale and the supply chain and the value chain has been sitting back and just waiting to see what happens and pushing all of that risk and responsibility onto the farmers and I'm hoping that we can tip that in the opposite direction and have it shared a bit more equitably across the whole supply chain.

37:30Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: So I'd also like to ask you about what it's like building serious climate work from the Victorian high country and what advice you might have for any regional ag tech founders.

37:40Dr. Maddie Mitchell: I think being a rural business is both an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. I think as an advantage, you know, when you're working in the agriculture sector, being rurally based is very much an advantage because you are living alongside the farmers and the industries. It helps to very much put yourself into their shoes and understand what they care about, the challenges they face. And so I think it's very much an advantage. The other thing is don't let the talent pool deter you. There often is a challenge in terms of access to highly experienced people in rural areas. They're absolutely there.

38:26Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And my advice is look beyond your immediate region because SeaOak's model is 100 % remote. Every single person that works at SeaOak is remote. And we do catch up several times a year as a team to strategize and have team building exercises and things that we're first and foremost a remote business. So don't let a person's location deter you from hiring the right people. I think being based rurally is actually an advantage in that space. And then I think one other thing, one other piece of advice that I would leave is around partnerships. So for regional, rural businesses, for any business, actually, let's be honest, partnerships are absolutely everything.

39:09Dr. Maddie Mitchell: And our business, The Oak, has scaled really quickly in three years. So in just under three years, we've already grown from a team of one to a team of 11 now. So we are growing really quickly and partnerships can absolutely make or break your business. So I think that's probably the last thing. Being based regionally, rurally, get yourself some very strong partnerships and we'll really commit to those partnerships. Make sure that they're the right partners.

39:38Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: Sarah here again. Thank you to Ebony Greaves-Wingy and to Maddie for hosting. I'll definitely be following the progress of Lens as it rolls out here in Australia. One thing I like about the Lens model is that it's very tangible and applied. Right now, there's no shortage of emerging technology for measuring carbon, biodiversity, soil health, and other environmental outcomes. But as Ebony says, collecting, verifying, and reporting this information can be expensive, fragmented, and often of limited benefit to farmers. It's a real category where we just haven't seen huge adoption and scale. Many of the companies in this space are working to connect the data to better on-farm decision-making, like improving agronomic practices or yields, or tangible commercial outcomes in the supply chain, like improved market access or more favorable insurance arrangements.

40:24Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: But the business case has been pretty tricky. The idea of zooming out to find multiple people who want the practice change in a specific area and then pooling that capital to just pay for the practices makes some sense. I do wonder, and we didn't have the chance to dig in, how the funders think about the ROI, whether it's a philanthropic or marketing expense or truly an investment in resilience. I imagine it actually varies, and in some ways, that's the beauty of the model. Another concept I'm left thinking about from this episode is how we need to think beyond tech for individual farms. Many of the challenges facing agriculture, from climate risk and water quality to biodiversity and supply chain stability, don't stop at a boundary fence.

41:06Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: Ebony believes we need to move towards a more coordinated, landscape-scale approach that brings together farmers, businesses, government, and other stakeholders around shared priorities. Lens is one way to make this happen, and others are trying it too. We actually talked about this with Jay Watson of General Mills a couple years ago and a whole supply-shed approach to sustainable land transition. And in some ways, it echoes what Tracy LaFroy shared in a recent episode about the power of local knowledge and collaboration. in that case, in the energy hosting and renewable energy transition context, but how that can be unlocked for regional-scale changes and how it's important to not just rely on individual farmers to change on their own.

41:46Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: I think that's something important as we think about the sustainability transition and incentives we create. And finally, sustainability incentives need to recognize and reward farmers for the work they're already doing, not just incentivize new practices for those who haven't started the journey. This is one area where traditional environmental markets have struggled. But Lens takes a persona-based approach, meeting farmers where they're at with three different funding pathways. It makes sense to me that we recognize the ongoing work involved in maintaining healthy soils, improving biodiversity, and building more resilient farming systems.

42:18Ebony Greaves-Zwinggi: So that's it for another episode of Ag Tech So What? Thank you again to our guest, Ebony, and to Maddie for hosting, and thank you for listening. Please make sure you hit follow so you automatically get our episodes. and if you like what you're hearing, please share it with a friend. For any more information on the resources in this episode, check out our show notes and for more on all things ag tech and the so what, visit our website, tenacious.ventures. I'm Sarah Nolette. I'll catch you next time.