Carbon farming – a farmer came up to me this week and asked me what is it and what does it mean? He said he was 58 years of age and he had two daughters in Dublin who need support – he was looking for an alternative source of income.

We often hear carbon farming touted as an alternative source of income for farmers. In New Zealand and Australia, carbon farming has been growing for the last number of years.

Essentially, in New Zealand, a lot of the large tracts of land in the uplands and mountains have changed hands. The sheep and cattle that used to graze the land have been removed and many farms have been planted with trees. Many European investment funds have been buying this land.

Long story short – the investment funds are using the land to grow trees to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere into the trees and soils – that’s carbon farming.

Their hope is that one day they will get rewarded for the carbon stocks they are building in the soils and trees.

These stocks will continue to grow and then one day they will cash in the growth in carbon stocks for whatever value carbon is on that day.

The issue at the moment is that the infrastructure to trade carbon globally is non-existent.

We need to get to a space where the carbon credit in New Zealand can be traded on a platform which is linked to a carbon credit traded in Ireland – there has to be a clear conversion rate. So, currently, it’s a ‘wild west’ trading scheme – anything goes. That is not the system you want to sell the carbon credits from land in New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

So how can farmers engage with this? For a start, they need to know and have a starting point. The intention if you go down this route is that you get rewarded for building carbon stocks above and below ground. This means you need to take soil samples one metre deep. That will tell you how much carbon is there and if you come back in 10 years, you can do the same again and see the change.

This week, I was reading a number of Australian experiences that were increasing on farm carbon stocks using cattle and sheep.

For example, a 3,900ha farm in northern Queensland measured carbon stocks seven years ago and then changed how they were farming. They started subdividing paddocks, increased the stocking density and incorporated legumes into the grazing mix with native grasses.

Once adjusted for carbon buildup and removals, discounted stock movements, etc, they sold 66,000t of carbon credits at what they describe as a median price of $93/t to the Queensland Restoration fund. That’s $6.1m (€3.7m).

Some studies have found much higher proportions of carbon in grassland below 20cm

They waited seven years for this payout, until they could verify the measurements to be certain there were credits to sell.

The time also allowed the change in management to take hold, to increase carbon stocks. They suggest about 25% of the carbon sequestered is stored below 30cm.

Some studies have found much higher proportions of carbon in grassland below 20cm.

So, clearly, some Australian farmers are on this journey and it is reported that some 94,700 carbon credit units have been awarded by the Australian Clean Energy regulator to date.

Back home this week, MEPs from the environment committee voted in favour of an EU certification framework for carbon removals and carbon farming.

Copa Cogeca welcomed the step in the right direction. In general, it looks like Copa is looking for farms to be managed as whole units – so any activities linked to mitigation or adaptation are counted.

Ultimately, Ireland and the EU need to get this train to leave the station

This comes back to the principle of the Arc Zero project that ran on farms in Northern Ireland that concluded farm units must be managed as a whole, not individual parts.

Ultimately, Ireland and the EU need to get this train to leave the station.

You can see from above that the train has left the station in Australia. Remember, Australia now has free trade access to sell beef into the UK.

If more Australian farmers get a $6.1m shot in the arm like the farm I described above, the competitiveness of Irish and UK beef in the British market will be tested.