thinking about with all the new 'carbon era' noise around. This piece aired on PM last Thursday or Friday. We also got a run in the Sustainability Report - click here to read the full article.
Farmers are wondering: Should they, shouldn't they - AND, while the soil carbon sequestration meth seems to take forever, we have only ONE method which broadacre farmers can take part in. The Tree Planting meth.
So, we've decided to put about 20ha. of a tree planting methodology onto our place - basically to see if we can figure out how hard/easy it is for the ordinary bloke to take part. This is the STATED aim of the CFI - we are meant to be able to take the meth 'off the shelf' and do it on farm. So, lets see.
I know I can call someone who knows about planting trees, but how do I keep the most of the money in the regions? What local skills will I be able to use? Who holds the know-how to navigate the approval process? Will I need a degree to understand it? Can you do it without $1/2 million from the biodiversity fund round one?
Most of this carbon market knowledge resides in the cities - which is why we are mounting our NEW Carbon Market Summit. We are bringing all that knowledge about HOW this works - legally, in the accounting sense, for councils and NRM agencies to come and learn - If this is going to happen, lets make the regions strong, let our accountants, lawyers, councils and others be the BEST informed they can be! Lets own the bl.....dy thing! (please note, this is ADDITIONAL to our annual Carbon Farming Conference and Expo - now in its sixth year)
Rest assured however, we are still the champions of the soil! After all, we owe our existence to the interaction between the sun, the rain and the soil! And the soil is the one we can 'manage'. It is still exciting for me to realise that farmers have control over the largest carbon sink over which we have control in the world . Rise up, Sir Farmer!
If anyone else would like to add land into our tree methodology 'project', I'm happy to turn it into a bigger project - not sure how you do that if its over more than one area and one state, but I am sure we can figure it out! I'm talking with a company which does have experience in tree carbon so I won't be going it alone. If you don't have any land, but want to be part of a 'team of discovery' also happy to have you on board. I have a feeling there will be heaps of work to do!
And we'll learn all about HOW the heck this works.
Onwards!
