Through either one-on-one facilitation or self-assessment, you will be asked a series of questions relevant to your business.

There is no pass/fail – be honest with yourself to better understand your business opportunities.

The program is entirely voluntary and we are here to assist you where required.

By participating in Hort360 you will have the opportunity to access technical support, on-farm training, and professional networks.

This will enable you to increase efficiencies, reduce costs, improve productivity and product quality, and build wealth.

Increased profitability and sustainability are the key benefits of improved natural resource management and business management.

Voluntary uptake of benchmarking using the Hort360 platform will also ensure the most effective use of farm inputs and farm resources to reduce environmental impacts, transaction costs, and the need for regulation or mandatory controls in the future.

Growers completing the necessary elements of Hort360 will also be able to achieve accreditations such as Hort360 Reef Certification, develop farm business action plans and seek resilience funding, and develop ESG reports if desired.

Apart from the benefits to your business, Hort360 allows the industry to be guided by science and good business governance to make decisions that work for farms.

It also enables the horticulture industry to demonstrate stewardship of the environment and willingness to protect the very land we farm on.

Your individual personal data is held within the Hort360 system.

As a product of the Queensland Fruit & Vegetable Growers (QFVG) data is subject to QFVG’s Privacy Policy and data breach policies.

To enable us to demonstrate and report on industry stewardship your data is de-identified and collated to help measure progress towards the industry’s improved management practices. It will be used to help identify future RD&E opportunities, product development, and training needs.

Hort360 is the best management practice (BMP) platform for Australian horticultural growers. It is a benchmarking and risk assessment tool designed to give growers a 360-degree view of their farm business operations. Hort360 assists growers to identify potential risks, capitalise on business opportunities and highlight unnecessary farm expenses. It is a whole of farm business approach.

Hort360 aligns with, and provides data to the Horticulture Sustainability Framework. Hort360 also aligns with the Australian Agriculture Sustainability Framework. 

In association with Fair Farms, Hort360, aligns with SEDEX Pillar 4 and the SAI Platform Farm Sustainability Assessment.

Hort360 is one of the most comprehensive sustainability reporting schemes evaluated that is available at the farm level and in many areas exceeds criteria and indicators in the AASF. (Schuster Consulting Group, 2021) 

Hort360 also provides an alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Reporting Initiative. 

These alignments will better enable you to articulate how your business performs and responds against national and international requirements.

ESG is a framework used to assess an organisations business practices and performance on various sustainability and ethical issues.

ESG enables a business to create and sustain long term value and can be used to assess how businesses manage risk and opportunities.

Key principles of developing and demonstrating an ESG business profile are being clear about what you currently do, what you plan to do, how you perform amongst your peers and whilst not compulsory to report against, there are a range of data metrics that are useful in demonstrating outcomes of action implementation / change (ie. lowering emissions, improving soil carbon) and increasingly will become business as usual.

Whilst you may not want to report business operational data, data captured for internal purposes is useful to gauge business performance and for accessing financial streams (ie. business loans, carbon credits, reef credits, natural capital).

The Hort360 ESG platform enables growers to report their sustainability efforts against global, national, and state-based goals. 

The Hort360 ESG report is structured to provide growers with a template format which can be updated annually. The report format enables growers to provide statements regarding current management practices (current), what they plan to do (intent), how they perform amongst your peers and industry expectations (Hort360 Gauge), data metrics demonstrating outcomes of actions implemented and alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Greenhouse Gas calculation has been developed utilising the HortCarbon Info calculator (with permission), the Primary Industries Climate Challenges Centre (H-GAF) Horticulture Greenhouse Accounting Framework and aligns with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Inventory and National Greenhouse Account Factors.

By generating comprehensive reports on sustainability in agribusiness, Hort360 ESG helps growers present a clear picture of their contributions to ESG goals to financial institutions, markets, insurance, and investors. 

Hort360 and Hort360 ESG are provided to growers to use freely at their own risk and is provided “as is”. Queensland Fruit & Vegetable Growers Ltd is not liable for the data entered by the grower to fulfil the need of the report template.

The structure of this report aligns with the Global Reporting Initiative sector standard GRI 13: Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fishing Sectors 2022 and provides alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Hort360 ESG is the first of its kind developed specifically for horticulture, providing a simple, guided process to support the industry in developing ESG reporting requirements.

Learn more about the platform here.