ISSB Moves to Update Sector Standards for Agriculture and Power Reporting

The IFRS Foundation’s International Sustainability Standards Board has released new exposure drafts proposing updates to three SASB sector standards covering Agricultural Products, Meat, Poultry and Dairy, and Electric Utilities and Power Generators. The proposed changes are intended to improve how these industry-specific standards align with the ISSB’s broader sustainability and climate reporting framework, while also strengthening their usefulness for investors and expanding their relevance across international markets.

This matters because sector-specific reporting remains one of the most important parts of sustainability disclosure. Broad reporting principles can help companies explain their overall approach to sustainability, but investors often need more detailed industry-level information to assess where the most material risks and opportunities sit. By revising these standards, the ISSB is continuing its effort to make sector-based reporting more consistent with its global baseline.

 

The SASB Standards Remain an Important Part of the ISSB Architecture

 

Although the ISSB introduced IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 as its core sustainability and climate reporting standards, the SASB standards continue to play an important supporting role. Companies applying ISSB standards are expected to refer to and consider SASB guidance when identifying and disclosing industry-specific sustainability information.

That makes these amendments significant. They are not just technical edits to a legacy framework. They are part of a broader effort to ensure that the sector-level guidance companies use remains aligned with the language, logic, and reporting expectations of the newer ISSB standards. In practice, this helps create a more connected reporting system where general sustainability disclosure and industry-specific disclosure are better integrated.

 

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Agriculture and Food Standards Are Being Expanded to Reflect Broader Sustainability Pressures

 

One of the most notable parts of the proposal is the planned expansion of the Agricultural Products standard to include direct farming operations. This suggests a broader recognition that agricultural sustainability risks cannot be understood only through supply chains or product processing. They also sit directly at the level of land use, resource intensity, and on-farm practices.

The proposed addition of food loss and food waste, as well as land use and ecological impacts, further strengthens that direction. These topics reflect some of the most material sustainability challenges in food and agriculture today, where pressure is rising not only around productivity and emissions, but also around resource efficiency, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.

For the Meat, Poultry and Dairy standard, the proposed changes appear to move in a similar direction. New disclosure topics on product innovation and both environmental and social supply chain management suggest a wider view of sustainability performance. This moves reporting beyond narrow operational questions and toward a broader understanding of how companies manage change, sourcing risks, and stakeholder expectations across the value chain.

 

The Utilities and Power Standard Is Being Updated for a More Complex Energy Transition

 

The proposed revisions to the Electric Utilities and Power Generators standard are also important because the power sector is undergoing structural change in almost every market. As utilities face decarbonisation pressures, grid expansion needs, community scrutiny, workforce transitions, and supply chain risks, the scope of what investors need to understand is also changing.

The addition of disclosure topics such as ecological impacts, community relations and rights of Indigenous Peoples, employee recruitment and retention, and supply chain management reflects that wider reality. The power sector is no longer judged only by fuel mix, emissions intensity, or reliability metrics. It is also increasingly judged by how it manages land use, stakeholder relationships, labour capability, and procurement risk as it moves through the energy transition.

These proposed additions suggest that the ISSB is trying to ensure the sector standard reflects the broader operating realities utilities now face, especially as infrastructure development becomes more contested and workforce capability becomes more important to long-term performance.

 

The ISSB Is Continuing Its Broader Standard Enhancement Programme

 

These new drafts complete the latest phase of the ISSB’s planned SASB enhancement work under its 2024 to 2026 agenda. That broader effort has focused on upgrading selected priority sectors so that the older SASB standards work more effectively within the ISSB reporting system and are more internationally usable.

This is important because one of the long-term challenges in sustainability reporting has been fragmentation. Many companies and investors have worked across a patchwork of standards, frameworks, and voluntary guidance. By updating SASB standards in a more structured way, the ISSB is trying to reduce some of that fragmentation and build a more coherent reporting base around its global standards.

The emphasis on international applicability and interoperability is especially relevant here. Sector standards that work well in one market but poorly across others are less useful in a reporting system that aims to serve global investors. These amendments appear designed to strengthen comparability without stripping away industry relevance.

 

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The Consultation Period Will Shape the Final Form of the Standards

 

The ISSB has opened the draft amendments for comment until July 24, 2026. That consultation phase is likely to be important because these sectors contain a wide range of companies operating under very different regulatory, geographic, and commercial conditions. Feedback will probably focus on whether the new topics are practical to report on, whether the revised metrics improve decision-usefulness, and whether the standards strike the right balance between specificity and flexibility.

That next stage matters because sector standards are only valuable if they are both material and usable. If they are too narrow, they can miss critical risks. If they are too broad or too complex, they may become harder for companies to apply consistently and harder for investors to compare meaningfully.

 

Why These Proposals Matter

 

The ISSB’s proposed updates matter because they show how sustainability reporting is evolving beyond general climate disclosure into more refined sector-level expectations. Agriculture, food production, and power generation are all sectors facing major sustainability pressures, and investors increasingly want clearer, more standardised information on how companies within those industries are managing them.

By updating these standards, the ISSB is reinforcing the idea that sector-specific reporting remains central to decision-useful sustainability disclosure. The broader direction is clear: global sustainability reporting is becoming more structured, more industry-specific, and more closely aligned with the practical realities of how businesses create and manage environmental and social risk.