There were a lot of new faces at this year's Wilmot field days, with a majority show of hands confirming that fact from more than 200 bums on seats in the packed woolshed at Hernani.
As usually the air was surprisingly cool at 1200 meters after rain the day before and a number of Queenslanders shivered in their thin jackets.
A lot there were consultants - especially data engineers eager to become involved in the greatest quantification of agriculture ... ever.
Of course this transition from "modern" farming to more sustainable practice sits correct as an ethos among those who attended this week's field days.
"I like to fix busted country," said Breeza Plains producer and regional manager of Faulkner Farming, Matthew Tonkin who endorses zero-till cropping and extensive use of the Yeomans' Plough. "The hardest land responds the most."
Managed grazing, tightly controlled through digital software is going to the next level at Wilmot where trade cattle on rotation build soil organic carbon that has already been sold to Microsoft.
Digital discipline is a mantra of the private investment company MacDoch Group, led by Alasdair MacLeod, which has spearheaded the regenerative farming movement.
"The Chubb review has given the Australian Carbon Credit Unit a clean bill of health and will drive demand for carbon offsets from corporates," he said. "And it's OK not to sell those offsets. Branded products pay a premium for carbon neutral beef. But the important thing is to measure, measure, measure. As data tech becomes embedded in business it will be less of a headache. Don't worry or fear it. Instead, use data to your advantage."
MacDoch Group has developed software to track managed grazing, and is proving that the process builds soil organic carbon through its farms at Wilmot, Woodburn and Paradise Creek. To date its platform MaiaGrazing has 1000 farmers on its data base.
Making money from soil carbon is a way of building farm resilience by offering another pathway to profit.
"Why shouldn't farmers make money from soil carbon?" asks Ashley Silver, CEO of MacDoch's latest enterprise Atlas Carbon - officially launched at the field days.
The American-born CEO is charged with delivering a supportive agronomic framework to farmers who already use the MaiaGrazing platform to rotate cattle in a way that grows soil while proving to the Australian regulator - the toughest in the world - and the customers who bought the crop of ACCUs, that soil organic carbon is increasing.
With experience in carbon conservation in Latin America and East Africa, where she worked on avoided deforestation projects and sustainable tourism, she also earned a business degree in Switzerland while her partner was employed there with the United Nations.
"I am able to combine my expertise in registering carbon projects with the ability to process more data, faster to service more people," she said.
"There are 1000 farms registered with MaiaGrazing and 20,000 more have the potential to do the same. We need the ability to process them at scale."
Ms Silver emphasised that farms not already at carbon neutrality should still sell carbon credits, provided the percent of soil organic carbon increased from a baseline measurement.
"If property emissions are stable you can participate. You don't have to be net zero as a property owner to sell ACCUs.
"We like to think off ACCUs as bringing new practice change. The reality is that there's a growing market for carbon credits and livestock producers can reduce their risk of market volatility through another income stream."
Ms Silver did not advocate saving credits for a red meat supply chain as a good thing, and doubted end consumers would fork out even more for an already expensive steak, if the supply chain was ordered to fund carbon neutral products.
"If the clean energy regulator required farmers to pay a carbon tax they would find that farmers don't have cash in the bank.
"The real incentive for graziers is more livestock production. I believe we let market forces drive change."
Ms Silver pointed to New Zealand farm tax and a price penalty on caged eggs in the US as failing the consumer.
"The market for ACCUs is strong," she said. "And the market does the right thing to incentivise adoption.
"It's not fair to treat farmers who have the smallest profit margin like oil and gas companies who make huge profits. This year inflation and war has been their friends.
"If oil and gas companies can pay for this farming transition I'd rather that than food consumers."
The end users of red meat are more interested in the sustainable qualities of their product from farms that are being restored back to their former glory.
MLA figures suggest 35pc of consumers trust ethical practice, while a quarter want community alignment, in changed practices concerning animal welfare in particular, while the same portion wants environmental action from the farmers who supply them.
"It is important to tell the story," said Katelyn Lubcke, project manager with MLA.
"The more people who know about the beef industry the more positive their perceptions are."
Read more: Tablelands property sells above expectation.
Interestingly, consumers were interested in the beef story but when it came to bacon, three-quarters said they didn't care about porkers.
Of course data is the core part of the story and through the recording of world's best data - at scale - there will be enough supply of ACCUs to feed a growing demand from polluting corporates, with everyone along the supply chain eager to get involved.
The key is to record the data with Ms Lubecke cleverly illustrating the generational divide when it comes to the job of data collection that is suitable for computer input.
First she showed the audience a photo of her brother's "office", in the cab of his tractor where multiple screen glowed back layers of detailed paddock information, while in the next her father recorded ram movements into new pastures with illegible pencil scribble in a little red Elders notebook.
"Data is required from the supply chain. Consumers want to know the story and data can tell it," she said. "Let technology by a solution."
Sam Duncan from FarmLab at Armidale, a former junior Air Force officer who saw first hand the impact of climate change in the Horn of Africa, and learned of Alan savory's techniques to grow carbon in the soil, said digitising paddock evidence kept him awake at night.
"Good data is really critical," he said. "You need to showcase your natural capital to your clients. Start digitising data. Your agronomist should put all of it into a useable tool that can be accessed by the farm.
To convince farmers that regenerative agriculture through managed grazing really works, MacDoch Group's philanthropic arm funds the organisation Farming for the Future, headed by Dr Elizabeth Heagney, which aims to bring ecological assets into the business model through natural capital accounting.
"Biodiversity benefits a property as does water quality, carbon sequestration and shade and shelter for livestock," she said. "Farmers are motivated to invest in natural capital because it leads to resilience and productivity. With improved natural capital there is reduced variability and more stable farm production."
Farming For The Future has previously completed a pilot study of 15 farms on the New England, which use managed grazing to grow carbon and compared them with ABARES' data for all farms in the same region and found they reaped a profit increase of $100/ha.
An ambition is to map the natural capital of 1500 farms nation wide, with 130 recently added to the list. To date 225 farms have signalled a willingness to be involved in the project, 116 of those in NSW.
While degraded farms increase their capability as the data curve bends upwards, there is a sweet spot beyond which production and conventional farm profit falls.
At this point landholders might be tempted to enter high value conservation markets.
New property owners Adam and Jacynta Coffey, Miriam Vale, Qld, worked hard and took a punt on falling cattle prices during the live export ban to stump up cash for a deposit on 2500ha of country bordering national park south of Rockhampton.
Not long after they arrived they were offered a staggering amount of money to lock it up and leave it but decided to carry on grazing, as had been their original intention - with the end-goal of growing soil organic carbon. Today they have divided their property into 30 paddocks using hot wire to rotate cattle and allow long rest between grazing.
"For us land rehydration is very important," said Mr Coffey
The carbon farming process is on a similar time scale to timber crops - from 30 to 100 years, with the first base-lining of data carried out five years before the first payment of ACCUs. Most projects extend for 25 years, after which time it could be assumed good grazing management has topped up the farm with its own level of sustainable carbon - provided the regenerative practice continues.
At MacDoch group's breeding property Woodburn near Walcha, 10 soil carbon levels have increased by 0.9 per cent in the last decade.
"But you don't need big increases in soil organic carbon to drive water retention, and productivity," reminded Atlas Carbon's Ashley Silver.
"At the end of the day improved lands have improved resilience."
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