ITB May 2026_FINAL - Flipbook - Page 24
F E AT U R E
“Our job is to help agricultural businesses identify their true
potential and their true performance, then see what the gap
is. And then, it is to understand what can really move the
needle, where they should focus to shrink that gap.”
OMRI RAHAMIM, FIELDIN
24 INTHEBLACK May 2026
“If someone is going to go down this
avenue, they need to be very open and clear
about the totality of all costs,” Viljoen says.
“What is the totality of costs versus
the totality of benefits you are going
to get over the duration in time?”
Investment decisions by agriculture
businesses or on behalf of agricultural clients
must integrate capital expenditure, operating
expenses financing structures, yield forecasts,
input cost reductions, regulatory risk
and more, he says, particularly as carbon
accounting requirements intensify.
“The fundamental role of a farmer is to
farm,” he says. “So, when supermarkets begin
asking for information from them around
what their Scope 1 and 2 emissions are,
that is something that I think accounting
professionals should be doing.”
ESG compliance data is clearly an
important value offering for systems
and processes that make farms smarter.
However, there will also be a vital role
for accountants to play in interpreting that
data and developing clear and credible
reporting frameworks.
ESG MANAGEMENT
For farmers, climate resilience is far from
theoretical. Changing weather patterns and
events have an enormous influence on their
bottom lines.
If a farmer is better able to manage their
business around the forces of weather, it is
a powerful competitive advantage.
Viljoen says it is quite simple to identify
which farmers excel at coping with weather
changes. “One gentleman showed me
a picture of his farm during the drought
season, and you could also see the adjoining
farm. It was actually quite stark, the
difference between the two.”
That difference, Viljoen says, was
attributable to sustainable land management
practices on one of the farms. Through those
practices, soil health was preserved and
therefore moisture was retained.
Rather than leaving farmers to learn
by trial and error as the weather changes
around them, technology can enable more
precise irrigation, improve traceability of
food for export compliance, reduce the need
for chemicals as fertiliser or insecticide, and
even reduce methane emissions through feed
optimisation on dairy farms.
However, Viljoen warns against these
and other administrative and informational
ESG requirements being managed
exclusively by farmers.
INNOVATION AND SCALE
Across the Asia-Pacific region, innovation in
agriculture varies broadly by region and sector.
In South-East Asia, Vichitlekarn says,
Thailand and Vietnam are leaders, partly due
to their strong track record in research, their
investment in infrastructure and their export
orientation.
“I also would name Malaysia, Indonesia
and the Philippines,” he says, noting that
their product is predominantly consumed
domestically.
In most South-East Asian countries,
domestic demand is shifting as the
ever-increasing middle classes are
pressing for higher-quality food and
greater transparency around provenance.
Levels of advancement around smart
farming also revolve around what is being
farmed, Vichitlekarn says.
“If we can subdivide farming into three
types, one is crop, one is livestock and one
is fisheries,” he says. “Looking at it that way,
it depends on the countries … [for example,]
rice production in Vietnam and Thailand
is already quite advanced, and now they
are adopting what they call ‘low-emission
rice production’.
“In terms of livestock, countries taking
the lead will be Thailand, Malaysia and
Indonesia, because they have more
meat-based food tastes.”
