Carbon Farming presents an opportunity for land managers to secure another income from their land as well as make improvements to their natural capital – their land.
There are two ways to farm carbon:
- By avoiding (that is, eliminating or reducing) agricultural emissions that would otherwise have occurred by changing, or introducing, specific on-farm practices designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for example: reduced methane emissions from livestock, reduced fertiliser emissions, manure management, savanna fire management; or
- By sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the landscape, for example, reforestation and managed regrowth (collectively referred to as carbon forestry), avoided deforestation, soil carbon (reducing carbon loss or increasing sequestration). Before an activity is eligible to generate credits, it requires an approved method for counting and verifying abatement. Land use, land-use change and the forestry sector, including agricultural land use, play an essential role in storing carbon.
Queensland is responsible for 90 per cent of Australia’s total land sector emissions. In all other jurisdictions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory, this sector acts as a ‘carbon sink’, meaning that the sector’s activity actually removes more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases.
For more information on how you can get involved, please see the following resources which may assist: