A PARTNERSHIP between Perth-based Carbon Sync and a European earth observation analytics provider, ScanWorld, has been dubbed a major step forward in establishing long-term carbon farming models for Western Australia.
Developed in Belgium, ScanWorld will use satellite-based farm images and other farm information to build artificially intelligent models which can assist in decision making within carbon farming projects.
"We all know WA is unique compared to the rest of Australia," said Carbon Sync co-founder and chief executive officer Louise Edmonds.
"What works in the Eastern States doesn't always work in the west.
"The breakthrough we are aiming for is to build models for each individual farm, a trove of information that gives insight into your farm so that your decisions can be supported by data that is generated on your farm."
In May 2020, the Federal government released a report - the Kind Review - on how Australia could lower its emissions while supporting the economy, businesses and households and focused on the industrial, manufacturing, transport and agricultural industries.
The review made recommendations on how to reduce emissions to help Australia meet and exceed its current international commitments beyond 2030 and meet commitments under the Paris Agreement.
"In September 2020 the government announced the Low Emissions Technology Roadmap, which identified soil carbon as one of five priority technologies for billions (of dollars) in government investment," Ms Edmonds said.
"Responding to the King Review, the Clean Energy Regulator has been working on improving the 2018 soil carbon method and has recently released a draft 2021 iteration on the 2018 method.
"The improvements on the 2018 method allow a hybrid measure-model-measure approach to soil carbon stock accrual validation.
"Over time it is expected this will reduce the cost of monitoring reporting and validation and enable annual cash-flow to farmers and project developers.
"Carbon Sync's work with ScanWorld is about improving the baseline sampling and is the first step in collecting the data required to develop the models that enable the validation."
ScanWorld general manager Guerric de Crombrugghe said satellite imagery offered the opportunity to provide local information at a global scale.
"Australia has taken the lead in carbon farming and thus, is a great place to start," Mr de Crombrugghe said.
"We'll use what we learn here to expand our services to other regions of the world.
"The science behind soil organic carbon and remote sensing is complex, but we've got a world-class team."
The models bring simple and affordable tools and visualisations to farmers and agronomists for informed decision making at the farm level.
They'll enable locations to be sampled to assess the impacts of management actions and climatic conditions on carbon capture.
Currently one of the main critiques of carbon farming is the belief that enterprises have to reduce their yield or production numbers in exchange for more carbon being absorbed, which would then lead to less food and fibre being produced for the increasing global demand.
However, Carbon Sync co-founder and sales manager Craig Pensini said over the long-term, regenerative farming practices used as part of a carbon farming project can lead to increased productivity.
"A lot of the criticism directed at regenerative agriculture/carbon farming stems from those who have a vested interest in conventional agricultural inputs, such as fertiliser and crop protection suppliers companies," Mr Pensini said.
"Regenerative agriculture still involves using conventional inputs, but judiciously.
"Overuse of artificial inputs essentially leads to the plants becoming lazy and less resilient, rather than utilising the microbial nutrition in the soil.
"A significant amount of artificial inputs can be wasted, especially in a season like this year with a lot of rain, which also means a lot of money is spent."
Ms Edmonds said having livestock as part of a carbon farming project was ideal as they add diversity to the ecosystem.
"The grazing impact of livestock and their excrement promote more soil microbe diversity," she said.
"And livestock are another commodity to diversify income.
"While carbon farming is more challenging to do in a 100 per cent cropping system, it can be done and we would look at aspects like diverse crop rotations etc."
Carbon Sync manages the entire process of a soil carbon farming project, from registering the project, managing soil baseline testing, compliance, audit and sale of credits under instruction from the farmer.
Although carbon farming is a relatively new concept for the agricultural industry, Ms Edmonds said the Australian carbon market had been active since 2011.
"Australia has some of the most robust legislation, markets and methodologies in the world and can quickly raise its ambition and action in response to climate change," she said.
The methodology involves establishing a baseline level of carbon already in the soil, then after a period of time, for example five years, a sample of soil is taken and tested to determine if the carbon level has increased from the baseline and by how much, which is the tradable figure.
"Australia's landbase combined with its established carbon market mechanisms gives us a global competitive advantage to export high quality carbon credits to support the world achieve its net-zero targets" Ms Edmonds said.
"Industrialised countries such as South Korea have an energy intensive economy but do not have the land base to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
"They will need the support of countries like Australia to achieve their net zero targets.
"That's one of the key reasons why carbon farming is such a huge opportunity for Australian farmers."
