Earlier this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it would not include Scope 3 reporting requirements in its final Climate Disclosure Rule, which would have required public companies to report the greenhouse gas emissions of their supply chain.
“This is a huge win for agriculture and we’re grateful the SEC listened to our concerns,” said Randy Kron, INFB president. “In the original SEC rule proposed, farmers would have been required to track every single move they made that impacted greenhouse gas emissions. That means every time we run our combines, use fertilizer, sell a bushel of corn or any of the many other things farmers do every day as part of our jobs, we would have to report.”
Onerous reporting requirements would have disqualified many small, family-owned farms from doing business with public companies, or companies that supply public companies, leading to more consolidation in agriculture. This all comes after the just-released 2022 Census of Agriculture data showing the number of U.S. farms has declined nearly 7% since 2017.
“Farmers are committed to protecting the natural resources they’ve been entrusted with,” Kron said. “But they cannot afford to hire compliance officers just to handle SEC reporting requirements. This is especially true for small farms that would have likely been squeezed out of the supply chain.”
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