Australian stock feed manufacturer achieves carbon neutrality

Owned by the Olsson family, the Four Season Company had been researching and manufacturing animal health and nutrition products for livestock for almost 30 years for use across Australia, South East Asia and the Pacific.

Brothers Daniel and Josh Olsson, who are overseeing the company's sales and marketing efforts, said the company was committed to developing methods and products that made a positive environmental contribution.

"We've experienced first-hand the impact of climate change on our environment," said Josh Olsson, who has also worked in both Indonesia and Laos.

"In response Four Season has invested heavily in carbon emission reduction projects, including researching and developing suitable alternative carbon animal feed sources for use in dietary supplements that reduce methane production.

"We've also implemented carbon sequestration strategies at the company 's farm at Goulburn and made an ongoing commitment to the reduction of actual carbon emissions at our manufacturing facility in Brisbane.

"The result of our efforts is that the factory is now accredited as having a certified carbon neutral manufacturing status, as well as our entire wool clip at Goulburn being carbon neutral delivered to early stage processing in either China or the EU.

"Our pasture improvement programs along with focused weed control programs have seen large increases in soil carbon storage, which has allowed us to utilise our farmgate carbon this way."

Mr Olsson said Four Season had achieved carbon neutrality in a collaboration with its strategic partners, Ternes Scientific and Data Farming.

"Ternes Scientific and Four Season Company have been working with Data Farming to develop a full set of carbon accounts for the stockfeed manufacturing business and to identify pathways where carbon insets can be delivered to manufacturing through the integration of carbon reserves from farms," Mr Olsson said.

"Over a period of 2021 to 2024, Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions profiles for Four Season's fine wool producing property at Goulburn, NSW, and the feed block manufacturing operation at Crestmead in Queensland were calculated.

"The analysis took data series for soil carbon vegetation and farm systems emissions to determine the overall footprint of the business supply chain."

Critical to the success of the project was the work by Data Farming on vegetation mapping.

"Calculating the amount of woody vegetation over large properties in fine detail can be a daunting task for a landholder and carbon companies," Mr Olsson said.

"Drones can be used, but scale beats them; and using an ecologist to walk a whole property is time consuming, inefficient, and costly.

"Data Farming has developed a process to use ultra-high resolution satellite imagery to automatically calculate foliage on grazing lands and provide the results in an easy to use format for carbon accounting," Mr Olsson said.

Greenhouse gases emissions from the farm amounted to 988 tonnes CO2e a year, while the total sequestration of carbon at the farm was 1533t CO2e.

"The emissions balance was 545t CO2e that could be re-distributed to the feed manufacturing business at Crestmead as carbon insets," he said.

Mr Olsson said carbon insets were critical to achieving low emissions manufacturing and securing a medium term pathway to net zero for Australian livestock feed products.

More than 55 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions at the Crestmead facility were related to electricity and waste management.

"The emissions (Scope 1, 2 and 3) associated with manufacturing of feed blocks averages as 325 t CO2e a year," he said.

"The greenhouse gas emissions embedded within feed blocks manufactured were determined using life cycle analysis and ISO 14040.

The analysis represented the manufacture of more than 6500 tons of salt and molasses feed blocks a year.

"For individual product categories, the embedded emissions for molasses blocks was 216kg CO2e a tonne, whereas salt urea blocks had embedded greenhouse gas emissions of 320 kg CO2e a tonne," Mr Olsson said.

"Embedded emissions in feed blocks represent the pathway to net zero and are important in accounting for emissions on farms where animals consume the feed product.

"Emissions from the manufacturing processes were offset by insets derived from carbon stocks held at the Goulburn farm."

Mr Olsson said further work was planned to build carbon stocks on areas of the Goulburn farm that were low in productivity or degraded.

He said through a process of sustainable intensification that increased soil and vegetation carbon stocks, further gains could be made.