Carbon market priority for agriculture is to shore up its own supply chain requirements ahead of the big polluters

This is not necessarily about tapping the apparent "rivers of gold" that might come from big polluters looking to offset their climate impact. More likely, this is about maintaining high-value markets in a competitive world.

"There is an assumption that agriculture is able to supply carbon offsets to big polluters but that is its weak point," says Environmental social scientist Dr Nicole Buckley Biggs, director of sustainability at farm management software company AgriWebb.

"To assume the industry is carbon neutral is not proven. The real question for the red meat industry is whether carbon credits from grazing lands should be sold to fossil fuel companies and other big polluters outside the agriculture industry. Another question is whether these climate-related improvements should be reported by meat companies and retailers to support "low carbon" or Net Zero claims. If producers sell carbon credits outside the industry, they've sold away the right to describe their meat as low-carbon.

"For the long-term outlook of the meat industry and acceptability of meat by the public, it may benefit the industry to keep those climate claims within agricultural supply chains."

Greg Noonan, CEO of carbon project developer RegenCo recommends farmers to look beyond the "rivers of gold" that will supposedly come from a carbon project and plan to "maintain market access".

"Start with your supply chain; that should be first and foremost. Primary producers need to protect their market."

Fortunately, the carbon trading environment in Australia is "second to none".

"The integrity of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit is the highest in the world and the Chubb Review validated that," said Mr Noonan. "Of course there is always room for improvement and Chubb is challenging developers to get more involved in the methodology - to innovate.

"Rather than the regulator leading the charge it is moving to allow the developer to come to the regulator with new ideas."

One of those innovative methods is something called Integrated Farm Management (IFM) which looks at an enterprise as a whole, not just at single entities like soil organic carbon.

RegenCo along with Climate Friendly and Green Collar are currently preparing a guide to the method for the regulator.

"We believe IFM will be a key piece of the carbon market moving forward, making it more mainstream," Mr Noonan said. "At the moment there are only a small number of methods and a small number of programs."

Mr Noonan said commercially relevant projects were a must, and cited the method "nitrogen use efficiency in irrigated cotton" as "having no commercial benefit".

"And there's another two dozen methods that have the same problem."

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