Discovering carbon farming options

The challenge

How to make decisions about carbon farming?

Australia's carbon markets could help farmers achieve best management practices, steward the land and supplement farm incomes. A typical farming enterprise has opportunities to manage or increase vegetation, boost soil carbon, avoid methane and nitrogen emissions, and improve energy efficiency. Individually, Australia's 140,000 farmers are small but collectively results could be large.

However, despite strong interest in carbon markets, and the Government's Emissions Reduction Fund and Carbon Farming Initiative, uncertainty about risk versus value, transactional costs and lack of trust are a deal breaker for most commercial farmers.

Our response

Helping the land sector realise their abatement potential

With tools to make informed decisions, lower market barriers and a way to reduce transaction costs, carbon farming could become a significant component of Australia's overall emissions reduction efforts into the future.

Our app will help farmers and land managers discover possible carbon projects for their land

Pronounced 'Look-see', our LOOC-C software tool means land managers can quickly assess eligible carbon project types and greenhouse gas abatement options, including estimates of abatement quantity such as Australian Carbon Credit Units. By assessing specific paddocks or farm areas, LOOC-C helps producers discover and evaluate their options for participating in a project through the Emissions Reduction Fund and other markets.

The results

LOOC-C meeting industry needs

Currently a prototype, we expect to release the LOOC-C tool soon. Our next version will include enhancements such as:

• representing possible co-benefits and dis-benefits associated with carbon farming projects
• calculating a baseline of whole-of-farm emissions, broken down by source so that users can identify improvement areas.

We are currently evaluating the LOOC-C prototype with producers and land managers.

Check out LOOC-C for yourself at LOOC-C.farm