Brahman cattle in a set of yards on Benmara
UNCERTAINTY created by a delay in the rollout of a new carbon farming methodology has been given as the reason for a Northern Territory cattle station going on the market.
Earlier this week, CBRE announced the listing of Benmara Station with an expected price tag of $40m. It was sold for $40m in 2023 to Sam Mitchell’s Wealth Check. UK firm Hartree Partners put the station on the market.
Speaking to other media outlets, Hartree said it was hoping for more certainty on Australia’s carbon market.
While Benmara has a Human Induced Regeneration project it signed up in 2023, the main issue appears to be with the delay of a new methodology called Integrated Farm and Land Management, which has been in development for more than three years.
The HIR methodology was wound up shortly after Benmara signed up its project, with a new version of the methodology promised to be part of IFLM.
HIR carbon projects incentivise the growth of existing trees, by stopping systemic clearing or changing livestock management to incentivise new growth. According to the Australian Carbon Credit Unit project register, Benmara’s project:
“Establishes permanent native forests through assisted regeneration from in-situ seed sources (including rootstock and lignotubers) on land that was cleared of vegetation and where regrowth was suppressed for at least 10 years prior to the project having commenced.”
But the rollout of IFLM has been slow, with climate change minister Chris Bowen promising a draft of the new methodology will be ready this year after multiple delays in recent years.
HIR projects were at the centre of several large NT property sales in 2023, which have slowed since the method was wound up.
The integrity of HIR projects has been in the spotlight in recent years, with Australian National University professor Andrew MacIntosh raising a series of highly publicised concerns. Prof Macintosh has mainly been using satellite surveys to claim HIR projects were likely sequestering no more carbon than land not under a project.
IFLM is about rolling all of the different types of carbon farming into one methodology, making auding costs cheaper and projects more scalable.
Concerns about HIR have been part of slow development of IFLM, with the department of environment last year proposing to chisel it out of IFLM and push it back for later development. With pushback from the carbon industry
- Beef Central will have more on the remarketing of Benmara in tonight’s property review
This reads of Bureaucratic Incompetance and Political Ineptitude along with Woke Idiosyncrasy.
Having destroyed Australian manufacturing now the aim is to kill Australian Primary industry, agriculture and food production. Look at the products in your food supplies imported from countries where there is minimum if any regulation, low standards of living and cheap labour. But representing big profit for exporters and importers to Australia.
This means total reliance on foreign production, product quality and living standards.
This will reduce Australia in the long term to the same levels.
Could it be more old world, woke, carpetbaggers bailing out of the sinking carbon ship? I think Prof. MacIntosh could be on the right track. These outfits sequester no more than the do nothing option. Could Trump be right in calling climate catastrophism – a scam.
Follow the money trail climate hoax . The scare campaign by the press and politicians we were supposed to be flooded on the coast years ago but the water levels haven’t changed