Ag News

SEC: Farms exempt from GHG emissions reporting requirement

On March 6, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) affirmed that regulations intended for Wall Street should not extend to America’s family farms. The SEC voted on its final climate disclosure rule and removed the Scope 3 reporting requirement, which would have required public companies to report the greenhouse gas emissions of their supply chain.

Since the rule was first proposed two years ago, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) led the charge for the removal of Scope 3. Farm Bureau members sent almost 20,000 messages to the SEC and Capitol Hill, sharing their perspectives of how Scope 3 reporting would affect their farms.

“AFBF thanks SEC Chair Gary Gensler and his staff for their diligence in researching the unintended consequences of an overreaching Scope 3 requirement,” said AFBF President Zippy Duvall. “Farmers are committed to protecting the natural resources they’ve been entrusted with, and they continue to advance climate-smart agriculture, 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.”

Farm Bureau recognizes the value of data collection and has actively contributed to responsible approaches to such efforts, such as being a founding member of the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium and a leader in Field to Market. Both organizations work to empower farmers when it comes to on-farm data collection.

The proposed Scope 3 requirement, however, would have imposed additional burdens on farmers, who provide almost every raw product that goes into the food supply chain. The onerous reporting requirements could have disqualified small, family-owned farms from doing business with public companies, putting those farms at risk of going out of business.

California has a similar reporting requirement for any company doing business in the state.

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