Inside a wool shed in northern New South Wales, in some of the best livestock grazing country in Australia, Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law, Alasdair MacLeod, takes a breath and addresses a crowd of more than 300. “The solution is beneath our feet,” he says.
MacLeod, newspaper publisher turned soil carbon entrepreneur, is talking about soil carbon sequestration, which he is pitching as a solution to both decarbonising the agriculture industry and aiding in keeping global heating below 1.5C. The problem is the science does not currently support its long-term use.
To livestock producers, MacLeod says, soil carbon represents “a market opportunity” which can be seized “alongside a profitable, efficient, farming business”.
It’s that proposition – and the promise of significant profits – which has brought beef producers, industry groups and a few environmentalists to the sixth annual field day of Wilmot farm, McLeod’s flagship property 600km north of Sydney.
It’s the perfect setting for the pitch. In 2021, Microsoft brought about US$1m in carbon credits from the 8,000ha rolling cattle pastures and three other properties owned by MacLeod.
“We blazed the trail for on-farm carbon sequestration,” MacLeod says.
Microsoft bought from one other soil carbon offset project in the same year, as part of its commitment to be carbon negative by 2030. In a review of both of purchases it said the soil carbon market is relatively immature and removal estimates are dependent on suitable measurement methodologies.
Wilmot said all contracts and agreements associated with the deal remain in place.
However, a group of Australian scientists found the recorded soil carbon rise at Wilmot, which was measured by a voluntary international scheme, to be “far too optimistic”. Carbon Plan, the US based non-for-profit which was contracted by Microsoft to audit the scheme, also found it lacked integrity.
Later, MacLeod tells Guardian Australia the Microsoft deal was struck in the infancy of carbon markets, and acknowledges that the methodology used can be improved. He says Wilmot remains “completely comfortable” with the deal.
‘Carbon developers’
At last year’s field day, MacLeod launched Atlas Carbon, a “carbon developer” which advises farmers through the lengthy and complex process of obtaining carbon credits.
Farmers can sign up to a 25-year carbon project and have soil carbon analysed and measured, for a fee. If they receive credits, the developers take a cut.
MacLeod says it allows farmers to capitalise on the window of opportunity to receive large payouts on the carbon credit market, while also encouraging better land management.
The aim is to secure Australian Carbon Credit Units through Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator, which have received some criticism but have a better reputation than those used in the Microsoft deal.
As of February 2024 there are 528 soil carbon projects regulated with CER, of which seven have been issued credits currently worth almost $10m.
But a consortium of Australian soil scientists, including Dr Elaine Mitchell, an independent consultant who presented at Wilmot open day this week, has called for the regulator to urgently address flaws in scheme.
Between 70 and 80% of fluctuations in soil carbon are driven by rainfall, and Mitchell says “a lot of recent issuances [of credits’] were the product of good climatic conditions”.
“Land management was a factor, but rainfall overrides that,” she says.
Mitchell says there is some evidence that soil carbon can be sequestered in Australia in the long term, but more data is needed.
One of the longest running soil carbon study in Australia conducted by the NSW Department of Primary Industry found a significant increase in soil carbon five years after new grazing techniques were implemented. But after 10 years, at four of six sites that recorded increases, nearly all soil carbon that had been gained was lost back into the atmosphere.
Greg Ward, a cattle producer has been to all six Wilmot open days and is in the early stages of soil project with a carbon developer.
“It just feels good. You see the soil and biodiversity improvements on the farm,” he says. “If we happen to make money out of it that’s a bonus.”
Emeritus Prof Robert White, of University of Melbourne has worked in soil science for over 50 years. He says global heating is making it more difficult to sequester soil carbon in the long term, as many Australian landscapes become hotter and drier.
But he says increasing soil carbon improves soil fertility and ecology, resilience to extreme weather, and water holding capacity – all of which increase productivity.
Instead of selling carbon credits, he says farmers should focus on “insetting” – counting carbon sequestration against their farm’s emissions. That will reduce the emissions intensity of their products which can be sold to retailers like Woolworths, which are increasingly demanding lower emissions product to meet their own net zero emissions targets.
“[Carbon developers] are not selling farmers the idea of offsetting their own operations because that doesn’t bring them any money,” he says. “Farmers can do that themselves.”
‘Ahead of the science’
At Wilmot, the demonstration continues. In a paddock of Angus cattle, Wilmot Farms general manager, Stuart Austin, holds a shovelful of the soil to the sun.
“We’re ahead of the science,” he says. “The soil science community is behind, they are hindering progress.”
He says he’s confident Wilmot’s soils sequester enough carbon to offset livestock emissions and sell carbon credits.
White says this scenario is “very unlikely”.
A 2017 global review that drew on 300 studies concluded soil carbon sequestration can offset just 20-60% of the greenhouse gases released by the animals on the land, making a “negligible dent” in overall livestock emissions.
More recently, a study by Australia’s leading soil scientists found that soil carbon is “unlikely to be a cornerstone strategy” in offsetting livestock emissions because of factors including slowing rates of sequestration over time, its vulnerability to seasonal fluctuations and monitoring difficulty.
Tom Archer, who attended the open day, last year became the first Australian farmer to receive carbon credits from the CER after his Queensland property recorded a large increase in soil carbon over five years.
He says there is now a far greater incentive for farmers to start carbon credit projects than sell low emissions beef into supply chains.
“What are we going to do with an inset on our product?” he says. “All that’s doing is costing us money unless we can find a premium for the product.”
He says there is some uncertainty as to what will happen over the course of the project if the property’s soil carbon levels decrease. “It has a 25-year timeline, so it probably won’t be my problem by then, but definitely, it’s a risk.”
‘Incomparable timelines’
Danny Cullenward, a University of Pennsylvania climate economist, was part of the Carbon Plan team that audited the soil carbon measurement methodology used at Wilmot.
“Carbon needs to stay put for hundreds of thousands of years if you are trying to match the timeframe of the consequences of burning C02, not just the length of a few decades-long carbon project” he says. “There’s something fundamentally incomparable about those two timeframes.”
The chief executive of Atlas Carbon, Ashley Silver, says carbon credits provide incentives for farmers to adopt more sustainable practices with the added benefit of carbon sequestration.
The start-up has strict requirements to ensure the properties it works with have the right soil types and at least about 500mm in annual rainfall to ensure carbon storage is long term.
“The next 10 years is probably the big window of soil carbon projects coming to fruition,” Silver says. “In the future … it could just become a standard expectation versus something you have to incentivise for.”
Cullenward says the agricultural sector has been one the most resistant to direct emissions reduction regulation, and that incentive schemes like the one being pushed by Atlas Carbon can delay climate action.
“There is no world in which we stabilise temperatures by selling others the right to pollute,” he says.
