Carbon farming is a land management approach that promotes the sequestration of carbon in soils and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.Sequestration of soil organic carbon (SOC) is a process that involves the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by plants and micro-organisms and its storage in vegetative biomass and in soil. Click here to find out more.

Soil carbon management has a direct effect on the profitability of the farm. Increase in soil carbon is strongly associated with increased profit. Management methods that increase soil carbon also promote rainfall infiltration, nutrient storage, increased biological activity and contribute to feeding the small water cycle.

What you measure is what you achieve, as increased soil organic carbon results in increased profit. Measuring soil organic carbon and implementing land management practices that increase soil organic carbon will not only enable you to partake in carbon farming schemes where you create an additional income stream for your family, but will also improve ecology and farm productivity.

You need to assess whether your property is eligible for soil carbon farming for trading purposes. Depending on which methodology you're using, there will be different eligibility requirements. For example, the first step to assessing whether your property is eligible under the Emissions Reduction Fund is to visit the CER website and fill in this questionnaire.

Carbon neutral refers to a policy of not increasing carbon emissions and of achieving carbon reduction through offsets. While net-zero carbon means making changes to reduce carbon emissions to the lowest amount – and offsetting as a last resort. The offsetting is used to counteract the essential emissions that remain after all available reduction initiatives have been implemented.

Both are valid and important climate solutions, utilising offsets in different ways, but using them as a climate repair solution that can be invested in right now (noting the urgency of climate action and time taken to develop and deploy technologies towards longer term net-zero targets).

Yes it is possible to make voluntary purchases of both domestic (ACCUs) or international units. Renewable Energy Certificates may be able to be used if they are related to indirect emissions (scope 3) sources consisting entirely of electricity, such as third–party operated data centres.

The tricky part for many organisations is often being able to measure their scope 3 emissions. More information on how to approach this in a robust way, can be found in Climate Active Technical Guidance Materials.

Yes, our carbon partners have access to an advanced version of our Soil Carbon Income Calculator (SCIC) and will be able to advise you on your potential income for running a soil carbon project on your farm. You can also check this yourself, by using a free version of the SCIC tool on our website. The SCIC will help you to understand roughly how much income you can generate from your farm over the 25 year lifetime of your project. The result will show you total potential ACCUs (Australian Carbon Credit Units) before government discounts that you could earn. It will also calculate the value in Australian Dollars ($AUD) that this represents as gross revenue. It is important to understand that the value shown is at today's spot price for ACCU's and this will certainly change throughout the years. Currently it is only going in an upwards direction. Finally, improved carbon sequestration rates are dependent on rainfall, and good land management practices that promote healthy soils and increased organic matter, so consultation with your partner and agronomist will set you up for success.

Some of our partners hold an Australian Financial Service License (AFSL) and are carbon traders. You can request to have an introduction to our trading partners who will not only assist you in developing and running your soil carbon project, but also have the experience to advise you on how to enter the carbon market. All of our partners can advise you on how to open your ANREU account (Australian National Registry of Emissions Units) which is where the government will issue your ACCUs to. Your earliest opportunity to trade ACCUs will be after your first offset period, which is typically about 3-5 years after you first begin your project, so there is no rush to find a carbon trader.

This depends on when you trade your carbon and the agreement you have with the service provider that manages the process of carbon measurement and trading. Such agreements are between the landowner and the project manager. The Carbon Count platform is a piece of software that reduces the cost and maximises the returns for all parties.

No. When you first start your soil carbon project, you will need to conduct a baseline sampling event to establish your starting level of soil organic carbon. Your partner will use the Carbon Count Platform to develop a sampling plan that is fully compliant with the regulations of the Clean Energy Regulator (CER), that will maximise your return on investment. Once you have finished this baseline sampling, you will be provided with a result in tonnes of total carbon across your project area. Approximately 3-5 years later, you will need to perform a subsequent sampling round following the same protocol. The resulting carbon measurement will be used by the Carbon Count Platform to calculate your 'Carbon Net Abatement' which is the increase in carbon that you have achieved over this period. Each time you would like to be credited over the 25 year lifetime of the project (approximately every 5 years), you will simply perform one of these subsequent sampling rounds and the Carbon Count Platform will measure, certify and issue you with a certificate that can be used to claim your ACCUs.

Depending on which management activity you will apply to the land, any land management activity that affects the 30-100cm layer would mean you have access to and generate a greater amount of carbon from the same area of land. It's a capacity/volume increase. Planting a deep tap rooted legume will penetrate deeper into the soil, increasing plant biomass and biological activity deeper in the profile, this relates to increases in organic matter and soil organic carbon.