AUSTRALIAN Agricultural Company recently released its sustainability report unveiling a series of potential carbon and biodiversity projects.

Like a lot of the other corporate cattle companies operating in Northern Australia, the company has only dipped its toe in the water with carbon – focussing its efforts on research and proof-of-concept.

The company has been earning Australian Carbon Credit Units for the past three years with a beef herd emissions project, which aims to reduce methane emissions through herd efficiencies. Beef herd projects are known in the carbon industry as low risk, low earning and need a large herd to be viable.

AA Co has been researching the potential to increase soil carbon across its portfolio, which can generate bigger numbers of carbon credits, but carries a higher risk. It has also been preparing for a legislated biodiversity or nature repair market, by surveying its assets particularly for native animal habitat.

With Governments looking at bringing in tighter legislation on greenwashing, the company has been reluctant to set any sweeping targets. Developing tools to efficiently measure carbon on a large scale appears to be one of the company’s main focuses.

In his message written message on the sustainability report, chief executive officer Dave Harris said company was contributing to research and policy decisions.

“Many of the technologies to address climate concerns and emissions are still in a research and development phase and AA Co is taking an active role in this work,” Mr Harris said.

“As well as our own growing program of work, AA Co has been actively involved in the increased activity at a policy and legislative level in our different jurisdictions.

“The federal government, in particular, has pursued a number of initiatives, including passing Nature Repair legislation, consulting on mandatory climate disclosure laws and beginning to build a sector plan for agriculture and land that aims to help decarbonise the industry.”

Potential for soil carbon increases in the north

AA Co has been heading a collaboration with the Food Agility CRC, Cibo Labs, FLINTpro, Carbon Link, Charles Sturt University, University of Technology Sydney and Federation University to see if it can increase soil carbon its properties.

The project has taken 1653 core soil samples, collecting additional drone and site data and refining analysis to calibrate a reporting model.

“The tool draws upon process models, empirical models and machine learning models to deliver an understanding of carbon in the landscape and how this changes over time, delivering estimates of carbon in soil down to 1.5 metres, as well as in pasture and woody biomass,” the report said.

“Previous science on carbon and in particular soil carbon in northern Rangelands has suggested that soil carbon stocks are driven primarily by climatic conditions and management actions are ineffective in driving long-term carbon sequestration.

“This is by far, the most extensive study of its kind in northern Australia to date.”

Preparing for a nature repair market

AA Co has been doing comprehensive assessments of its properties to see what native species habitats it has and preparing for the Federal Government’s Nature Repair Market – which is aiming to make a market for biodiversity.

“In addition, from the many potentially significant fauna species found within our estate, we identified 12 that are our highest priority, because of their conservation status, and habitats supporting these species have been added to the Tier 1 asset list,” the report said.

“This is a vast landscape to assess and traditional on-ground methods of field data capture and analysis are impractical and uneconomical at this scale.

“Through the AfN framework we have begun employing an assessment method, “Method 10” that integrates targeted on-ground assessments at representative sites across a landscape with remote sensing data captured by drone.”

• To read the full report click here