Big holes in the push for all beef carbon to be insetted, says project developer

Atlas Carbon assists producers to integrate carbon projects into livestock operations as a way of both setting up an additional revenue stream and improving production.

It's an arm of Macdoch Ag Group, which owns carbon farming trailblazer Wilmot Cattle Company in the NSW New England region.

Atlas' chief executive officer Ashley Silver spoke at Wilmot's 2024 field day event and her key message to producers was to 'take the carrot' and move quickly on carbon.

She said there were many holes and gaps in the argument that all sequestered carbon needed to be insetted or farmers would not have markets down the track.

"Can you imagine a world where the early adopters who achieved so much are told they've no longer got any business because they've run out of carbon," she said.

"A lot of the producers we interact with are quite small and might not have the right soil to sequester or a paddock for growing trees but they are still doing their bit.

"Is the supply chain really going to penalise small players and the best actors this way?"

For those sitting on the fence right now, thinking about a carbon project and watching how others are going before signing up, Ms Silver's advice was to get moving because soil carbon incentives won't be there for 100 per cent of producers.

"In the long term, all people in agriculture, whether it's livestock or cropping, will be under increasing pressure to shift practices to be more resilient," she said.

"But it's all new right now and we don't have foolproof processes and scalable technologies.That's what carbon methods are for. They're about incentivising new adopters.

"What comes after that is the stick."

It was hard to say what percentage of producers would need to be on board with carbon farming before regulation came in, but history had shown time and again that's the way it played out, Ms Silver said.

"The birthplace of carbon markets came out of the Kyoto protocol, and the first carbon methods were around giving credits to install wind and solar," she said.

"That drove adoption and more investment in renewables technology but the world has now moved on from paying people to transition to renewable energy.

"The second wave of carbon methods are focussed on nature-based solutions. So for livestock producers, this is our time.

"But it's clear that carbon methods, and the incentives to move, have a life span - they exist to drive early adopters to take the risk and prove out the business case so everyone else can then follow.

"Soil carbon is at the start of that curve now with only a small portion of land registered for soil carbon projects in Australia."

Forecast demand for Australian Carbon Credit Units, or ACCUs, is 50 to 100 million per annum over the next 10 to 20 years, Ms Silver said.

For nature-based carbon credits, land is the key ingredient and the majority of agriculture land in Australia is for livestock.

Thus the huge institutional investor interest in grazing country in Australia.

"Canadian pension funds, Primewest, Agricarbon Fund - billions of dollars in funds are looking at ag land not just for land valuation and ag commodities but for generating value from carbon credits," Ms Silver said.

"Family farmers will need to factor in their willingness to pay for all those elements to compete for land to expand."