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Explainer:
Introduction to Carbon Farming
Everything you need to know about carbon farming
New to carbon farming and not sure where to start? We’ll walk you through the basics.
- How it works: What is carbon farming, how you do it, what are the benefits and process to developing a project?
- Eligibility – How to understand if you might be eligible for a carbon project
- Methodologies – An intro to your current options
- Case Studies – Browse projects around Australia that are delivering environmental, financial and community benefits
- How we set baselines and measure progress re projects measured – Hear from one of our field team leaders
- Glossary – Demystifying the language around carbon farming
How does carbon farming work?
Carbon farming is about changing land management practice to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from on farm activity and to store carbon in native vegetation and soil. When done well, the addition of a carbon project can enhance agricultural operations by improving land condition and ground cover, increasing biodiversity and improving water retention. The additional, diversified income stream from carbon projects can also improve business resilience and enable reinvestment into primary production.
Hear from our land managers
Meet Mike Dempsey,
owner of a successful cattle grazing enterprise situated within the Burnett catchment of the Great Barrier Reef. Through an Avoided Clearing project, the Dempsey family have stepped away from the historic clearing regime that has taken place across the region, and decided to protect areas of native forest for 25 years.
Meet Glenn Rogers,
who is working to introduce carbon farming into the mix across the vast expanse of Talisker Station in Western Australia. Glenn is finding that the carbon project is bringing significant benefits for the landscape and helping to secure a sustainable future for the grazing operation.
Meet Mike Rosser,
who runs three carbon projects across his enterprise in western New South Wales. Mike is regenerating native vegetation through controlled grazing and feral animal management. Even though the Rosser’s purchased an additional property during a drought, with the support of the carbon money, they were able to start infrastructure upgrades straight away, putting much needed money back into the local economy during hard times.
How to know if your property is eligible for a carbon farming project
When considering a carbon project, there are many things to be taken into account, such as property location and size, the nature of the current land use, existing vegetation and management plans.
Talking to our experts about the methods that can be applied to a property or location is an important first step in the process. Once you understand the potential approach, the next step is to assess whether your property has enough scale to make it work.
This guide is indicative only. The ability to apply a method varies between States and Territories and individual circumstances. GreenCollar’s experts always work with you to determine the best method for your individual situation.
How are projects measured
Our field team work on the ground to catalogue vegetation and monitor project process. It’s their hard work that ensures the quality and integrity of our projects. Our field team specialists work hand-in-hand with our technical team to validate data collected by remote sensing, or satellite imagery, and identify and measure species within project areas. They sometimes spend up to two weeks on-site per visit, making sure we understand what’s there at the start and how it’s developing over time.
Hear what our Queensland field team leader, Alice McNeil has to say about her role.
More information
Methodologies
Anyone wanting to undertake a carbon farming project has to use an approved method. A project methodology sets out eligibility criteria, how the project will be undertaken, and how the abatement will be estimated, measured and reported. GreenCollar’s experts work with you to understand your agriculture enterprise and the landscape you operate within to identify suitable methods and design a project that is tailored to suit the land and your operations.
Avoided Clearing projects enable landholders in Queensland to break with historical clearing cycles by valuing the protection of native forest within productive agriculture operations. This prevents the destruction of native habitat in one of the most cleared regions in Australia, while storing carbon in native forest as it regrows.
Poor soil health can be a consequence of intensive management, where topsoil releases soil-sequestered carbon into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. In Soil Carbon Sequestration projects, sustainable and regenerative agriculture methods are used to help remediate soil health, in concert with more efficient irrigation systems or changes in grazing and tillage patterns.
There are different approaches to soil carbon projects depending on the type of agriculture operation.
Savanna Burning Projects in the north of Australia deliver sustainable, carbon-sensitive fire management projects that can earn carbon credits by decreasing emissions of methane and nitrous oxide resulting from intense, uncontrolled wildfires.
These projects aim to reduce carbon, methane and nitrous oxide emissions released by very hot, high intensity wildfires that occur in northern Australia in the late dry season, by carrying out planned, managed burns in the early dry season.
Reforestation, by environmental or mallee plantings, involves establishing and maintaining vegetation, such as trees or shrubs, on land that has been clear of forest for at least 5 years. A mix of trees, shrubs and understory species native to the local area, or species of mallee eucalypts can be planted, . These projects store carbon as they grow to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere
Reforestation by environmental or mallee plantings involves establishing and maintaining vegetation such as trees or shrubs on land that has been clear of forest for at least 5 years. A mix of trees, shrubs and understory species native to the local area, or species of mallee eucalypts can be planted. These projects store carbon as they grow to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere.
These projects reward land managers for changes to land management practices that enable native vegetation to achieve forest cover. Project areas must include land that has been cleared at least once for pastoral use, and have potential to achieve forest cover within the project lifetime.
Glossary
Browse our list of common language definitions for popular carbon-related terms used in the carbon farming and environmental markets.
Work with us on a carbon farming project
GreenCollar is one of the only operators in Australia with full end-to-end, in-house expertise in the development, management, legal and technical implementation of carbon projects. We are one of the largest suppliers of nature-based ACCUs to the Australian Government and at the forefront of the voluntary market, actively working to generate new demand for our high quality, high integrity ACCUs.
In the past decade we have developed hundreds of successful projects in partnership with farmers, pastoralists, graziers, traditional owners and other land managers across Australia, and nearly 90% of our existing project partners would recommend us to other land managers*.
*2023 GreenCollar Project Partner Survey
