How to get started in the business of carbon farming

In fact, many producers are already achieving the sort of management change goals required.

In turn, they have boosted their farming systems to better deal with increasingly erratic seasons and rising farm input cost pressures.

"Managing your land so you can earn carbon credits is as much about improving paddock productivity or your soil's drought resilience as it is about generating a fresh income source," said Riverine Plains farming systems chief executive officer, Pip Grant.

"And generally speaking Australian farmers are already doing a wonderful job of improving carbon management.

"For example, recent CSIRO research shows we have some of the lowest carbon footprint canola farming production systems on the planet."

Importantly, Ms Grant said farmers did not need a regulated carbon project to achieve healthier, microbe-rich soils and production gains, or to cut greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more atmospheric carbon.

"However, the carbon market does provide incentives for good farmers to officially record what they already achieve - and subsequently bank carbon credits on their balance sheet," she said.

"Carbon credits will simply be a potential sideline earning opportunity for doing what is good practice."

Indeed, farmer feedback monitored by AgriFutures Australia has repeatedly found producers were more interested in carbon farming if they knew increasing soil organic carbon helped their farm's productivity.

Therefore, with two thirds of Australia's agricultural soils officially considered "degraded" by past landscape management mis-steps, the logic for getting into carbon has been widely recognised as going well beyond the credits cash flow or commodity price premiums frequently talked about.

So, what steps should primary producers think about first?

A starting point should be flagging any thoughts and early queries about carbon strategies with their accountant and bank manager.

"This sort of topic is sure to come up in your bank reviews anyway, because the finance market is shifting pretty quickly to support sustainable practices which help farm production resilience," said AgriFutures' rural futures general manager, Michael Beer.

"Farmers should seek out trusted sources they already deal with, including financial advisors, agronomists, or government extension services, to ask basic questions - like, 'are there benefits for my place?', and 'what costs and risks should I know about'."

Helpfully, Mr Beer recently co-ordinated the publication of a 100-plus page farmer's guide to on-farm carbon management.

The grass roots AgriFutures manual explains the basics of carbon farming and carbon management projects, including obligations and risks, and what's relevant for different climate and farm commodity production zones.

Other industry resources available range from Meat & Livestock Australia's two-day training courses and information briefings by banks and farm service providers, to the Australian Farm Institute's online decision support tool.

Landholders should anticipate early stage expenses potentially costing multiple tens of thousands of dollars, plus some time consuming project setup preparation homework.

Discussing any carbon project intentions, early, with family members or other landholder partners, particularly mortgage owners, was vital to helping guide decisions, too.

"Given the long term nature of carbon projects, you also need to find out what it means if your situation changes, should you retire, sell the land, or how a project might impact ownership succession plans," Mr Beer said.

Sequestration projects last at least 25 years and must be maintained for the full period nominated - starting when carbon credits are first issued, five years after the project is committed to.

Early information gathering should include recording lot and survey DP numbers relevant to where exactly farm projects will be.

Mr Beer urged producers to take plenty of time compiling an honest summary of their current farming practices, including crop rotation cycles and farming history, grazing timing and locations, stock numbers, rainfall, fertiliser use and farm forest or woodland areas.

"This will be very useful to help determine what management practices can be implemented," he said.

More detailed baseline soil analysis data would be gathered later, before signing up, and during the following five years.

Riverine's Ms Grant noted farm greenhouse accounting framework spreadsheet tools were freely available online for compiling relevant data to calculate current emissions, including diesel, fertiliser and electricity usage and livestock numbers.

However, she felt a greenhouse calculator service such as Ruminati was easier to use and allowed farmers to juggle input figures to understand what less fertiliser may mean for their emissions footprint.

After compiling the initial data required, the most common carbon project registration process involved signing up to the federal government's Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) scheme.

ACCUs currently rank as the world's highest integrity carbon units, partly because the registration scheme is the only one created and backed by a government.

Other global schemes in Australia include B-Carbon, Verra, and Gold Standard.

"We can fairly confidently say Australia is very much a global leader in researching and understanding carbon sequestration and running a credible carbon market scheme," Mr Beer said.

While multiple types of ACCU project options exist, the key choices involve enhancing carbon sequestration in farm soils, or afforestation.

Ms Grant, who worked with carbon project developer and manager, Loam, before moving to the southern NSW farmer research group, felt soil carbon sequestration projects were "great for most farmers".

More carbon content helped the soil's water holding capacity, microflora activity, seasonal resilience and plant nutrient uptake efficiency, which may also result in reduced fertiliser application needs.

Planting trees on un-forested land was a good option for properties with non-arable land capable of carrying more timber, and for farmers wanting the benefit of windbreaks and shelterbelts.

"Integrity is the key thing farmers should be looking for when picking a methodology to register a project with," Ms Grant said.

"There should be a lot of sampling, auditing and precision rigour when measuring carbon so we know they are high quality carbon units - that's why most Australian carbon project developers work with the ACCU scheme."

Farmers could easily choose to run their own carbon project, and make more money, however most recognised the task was probably best handled by professionals, not unlike choosing an accountant or dentist to do their respective jobs.

"There's a lot of admin involved and technical support is required, too" Ms Grant said.

"An ACCU project is a 25- to 30-year commitment and there is a lot of importance in how the project is designed from the outset.

"You don't want to enter carbon projects if they will take up too much time or distract you from running the farm business."

Senior advisor with farm sustainability management consultancy group, RCS, Nick Kentish, said even for farmers doing a good job running their enterprise along relatively traditional guidelines, carbon farming and carbon credit rewards would only flow if they were flexible about their future management.

"There's a fair bit of mindset and management change that comes with this - cover crops, new pasture species, land use changes and more," he said.

"There are 12 specific activity changes required.

"If you are interested in practice change and recognise how vast amounts of soil microbial life can benefit and reward you for taking decisions which can sequester more carbon, you could be on the right track."

Clearly, many more farmers did appear to be thinking differently.

For more than 20 years RCS has promoted the sort of land management now aligned with carbon farming via its short courses and seven-day schools, but demand had jumped 25pc in the past 12 months.