Grainswest - Spring 2025

Spring 2025 grainswest.com 27 onversation about ESG continues to increase in volume as these three letters bleed into many facets of life. An acronym for “environmental, social and governance,” the idiom was coined in a 2004 report by the United Nations titled Who Cares Wins . This slightly uid term delineates the notion that people in any given business sector need to show their work when it comes to taking care of the planet, treating people well and operating in a sustainable, that is, socially acceptable, fashion. Agriculture has mostly plodded along for years, able to tune the movement out, but this is becoming an untenable course. Many players within the industry now shift toward ESG-based policies and procedures. At the farm level, this has changed nothing. Yet. While some believe farm life in the ESG era will continue uninterrupted, others posit a large-scale disruption that will eventually require data to be shared to secure basic…nancing, crop insurance or simply conduct business with a preferred supplier. While the EU leads ESG’s global siege, Canada is a distant, but curious trailer. The implications for the country’s ag sector continue to unfold. ESG standards invade Canadian agriculture By Trevor Bacque • Photos courtesy of Shutterstock and Alberta Grains