Ducks on the Pond
A podcast for rural women... by rural women. Hosted by Kirsten Diprose and Jackie Elliott, they seek expert advice and the stories of other rural women on issues such as succession planning, motherhood, starting a business...running for politics and much more!
Ducks on the Pond
How do we account for sustainable farming practices? FCA Collab, pt 3
It can feel very murky when diving into measuring things like nature, biodiversity, carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. Essentially, how do you know what you’re doing is working? And while the tools are still improving there are many reasons why it’s worth giving it a crack.
In part 3 of our collaboration series with Farmers for Climate Action, we dive into ways to help you account for all the good environmental work you do on farm. We also get insights directly from the bank, including what financial tools are out there and how to best communicate your vision with your bank manager.
Hear from:
- Carmel Onions, Executive Manager Agribusiness Sustainability at Commonwealth Bank
- Leah Garnett, dairy farmer at Mohyu, VIC and science researcher on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in dairy.
We also discuss some of the latest scientific developments in greenhouse gas reduction, including a ‘methane vaccine’.
Please note - this episode does not contain any financial advice. All financial discussions are general in nature.
Quack! Are you interested in sponsoring the next season of Ducks on the Pond? Contact us at Rural Podcasting Co.
All of these sustainability buzzwords was really starting to feature a lot in the media. I was reading and I thought this is actually becoming really important.
Speaker 2:I think these things have to fit into our farm system. So something like feeding a methane inhibitor. It's simple because it just goes into our feed.
Speaker 3:Hey, welcome to Ducks on the Pond brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co. I'm Kirsten Dippros. Now this is the last episode in our Farmers for Climate Action, collaboration and gosh. I am still coming down from the high of the Farming Forever Summit held in Canberra. In fact, my voice is a little bit hoarse, I think, from so much talking. More than 300 people in the room, most of them farmers, who are all wanting to lead the conversation on climate change, many already adapting how they farm, whether that's through increasing biodiversity, measuring carbon or adding renewables into the mix.
Speaker 3:And in this episode we dive into the measuring side of things. So, following on from our last episode about what climate smart farming looks like, how do we know what we're doing is actually working and how do you communicate what you're doing to your bank manager or to suppliers or other stakeholders? Well, I have two fantastic guests who have some very practical tips. First up, we'll hear from the banking side of things. Carmel Onions is the Executive Manager Agribusiness Sustainability at Commonwealth Bank. She's passionate about farming and has some handy advice on how to report the good work you were doing on farm and how to stack various opportunities you know, beyond the traditional commodities to give you multiple forms of income.
Speaker 3:Then you'll meet Leah Garnett, a dairy farmer at Moay U in the northeast of Victoria, and she's also conducted a research project on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in dairy. Turns out there's a methane vaccine in the pipeline, and quite a few other things being trialed too that are super interesting. Leah is also a lover of an Excel spreadsheet and talks about using the data to understand what's happening on farm. So let's begin with Carmel Unions, who began her career in agriculture economics. Oh, and I should add, her career in agriculture economics. Oh, and I should add, there is absolutely no financial advice given in this podcast. Everything discussed here is general in nature.
Speaker 1:I did ag economics at Sydney Uni and all of my extended family on the land. I grew up in regional Australia and I just love rural Australia. I love the values, I love the people, I love what they produce, I love the hard work. I just love everything about it and I really enjoy being part of the ag sector. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Canberra and my family farm in South Australia around Murray Bridge and Riverina, around Finlay. And what do they farm there? A lot of them have moved out now, but we had stock and station agents in Finlay and we had sheep and wheat in Murray Bridge. Yeah, lovely.
Speaker 3:Sounds like you always knew you wanted to do something in ag. So how did you come to work at Commonwealth Bank?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a funny story. I was traveling in London around the year 2000,. That Y2K bug and everyone was working in banks and making a lot of money. So I'd come back to Australia and try banking and perhaps I was a bit misguided, but Commonwealth Bank has been a wonderful place to work. I'm coming up to my 23-year anniversary and I've just had nothing but great career, good people and really good support.
Speaker 3:So where did you start at the bank? What was your initial role?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just started as an accountant. Then I moved into group strategy, which was super interesting seeing about how the bank genuinely is thinking about how it can be better at meeting our customers' needs and helping them on their journeys. I've run large projects. I've led customer teams, worked with our customers, supporting them through our team, and when I finally came back to agriculture, I was really curious that this kind of climate change and ESG all of these sustainability buzzwords was really starting to feature a lot in the media. I was reading and I thought this is actually becoming really important. That was about five years ago now, and so I just put my hand up to say I'm really interested in this and I think the bank needs to be on the front foot for supporting our customers.
Speaker 3:It'd be such an interesting role, I think, and not without its challenges, because it's such an emerging space and it's changing and developing all the time. From a farmer's perspective, what does the bank want to see, or how can they show that they're doing sort of things that are pro-sustainability or improving the environment, which a lot of farmers are doing anyway, but I think perhaps don't know how to report it.
Speaker 1:You're spot on. You don't just do sustainability as a producer, like when you get some spare time, you're actually doing it and living it every day that you're out in the paddock. Farming occurs in a natural ecological system, right. So the sustainability and the health of that ecological system is something that farmers are managing every day. And I think that sustainability can sometimes get a bit of a reputation that it's just a compliance exercise and more burden and it definitely does take up producers' valuable time. But we see it in two ways and both of them have a lot of opportunity to add value to producers' businesses and therefore, I think, really warrants their attention and their time.
Speaker 1:And the first is that we are seeing increased risk from the climate changing, and that's pretty much. Most producers would acknowledge that the climate is changing somewhat in their part of the world and the ability to manage the impact of a flood or a drought or a bushfire or frost or more heat stress days that's just good business sense. So if there's some nature-based solutions that would suit the business, they're definitely worth looking at. Because of course banks look at risk. Banks look at are they being identified and how are they being prepared for and managed, and the better the job we can do articulating that to the bank, the better it is for the farmers, because risk gets recognised in the credit assessment.
Speaker 1:So I think that's the first part of it. The second part of it is that a lot of these sort of nature-based solutions have positive impacts on profit or even land values. So if we're saying that the ability of the soil on the property can hold more moisture or we're just seeing the productivity improve because of the way the soils manage or some of these other options for farmers, then that carrying capacity or that sort of productive output can lift over time, which then can add value potentially to valuations, which is a good thing for the landowner. And similarly, if there's the opportunity to take some input cost out of the business model through some of these ideas that are emerging for production possibilities, then that's often a good thing for the bottom line. And that's before we even think about carbon markets and biodiversity schemes, which are of course, new opportunities as well.
Speaker 3:Tell me about those new opportunities Look.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot of opportunities, whether it's through the local land care group, or whether it's your producer group, or whether it's through your state department of primary industries, or whether it's through your state department of primary industries, or whether it's organizations like soils for life that I'm a part of, or the maloon institute. There's a lot of kind of organizations and a lot of them are not for profit, really set up to help producers take advantage of these sort of nature-based solutions that can potentially add profit to their business or improve the value of their lands. Or even ask the bank, ask, ask your bank manager. They might have some ideas for you as well.
Speaker 3:We certainly would yeah, a good relationship with your bank manager is is so important. How important is it having those conversations early on, even when you're just thinking about it or want to know more about it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really sort of share this message a lot. The best way that your bank manager can help you is by understanding your business really well, understand what the farming family understands about the key risks and then understand the plans for mitigating those. But then, equally, on the transition side, what sort of things is the family considering implementing for the business? Because that's when we can be proactive, to share some of the things that we can do to support those plans. So really articulating the plans it's not just sending over the financials and getting that annual review done. We actually really want to have a good conversation and we have a whole host of specialists that can come and join that conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love having access to a bank manager. If you're, however, say, on a much smaller kind of farm, maybe you're just starting out, you've just got a bit of land. Maybe you're just starting out you've just got a bit of land, whether it's a hobby farm or you're just trying to build up and you may not have that relationship yet how do you go about talking to a bank and accessing perhaps some of those early schemes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I think the bank genuinely wants to help. So have the conversation and the banker then can really guide you around what the bank needs to see to be able to move forward or, potentially, what are some strategies that you can explore on the journey to be able to get to that point where bank debt is feasible. The Rural Investment Corporation, rick, had a good scheme to support young farmers as well on their journey, and not necessarily young, but people new to farming and trying to build up their position. Start with the bank. They'll give you the guidance and then potentially some options to work through if you're still on the journey.
Speaker 3:What's emerging in terms of the bank's role and accounting for these sustainable measures that farmers are doing? I think sometimes there can be a fear out there that there's going to be tough requirements. Or if it's the carrot and the stick, there's worry. I think that the stick is going to be used. There's worry, I think, that the stick is going to be used. What's the future going to look like for farmers and reporting to their banks about what they're doing environmentally?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I do hear that there is concern about this kind of carrot and stick approach. The message I would say is that food and fibre, they're essential services and they're essential for humanity survival. So we're not in the business of putting really big, onerous, unachievable kind of requirements on our customers. In agriculture we very much see that partnering and collaborating and moving forward together and in support is our role. There's often really good overlap between achieving those outcomes and more profitable outcomes for your business. We have seen that mandatory climate reporting has started for larger organisations in Australia and over time that will sort of roll down through organisation sizes. So there is definitely examples where requirements are starting to be made on producers. So to my earlier point the earlier you can start to build up your capabilities, understand what's going on and do it in amongst your very busy roles as producers, rather than having to do it all of a sudden because something's being implemented. But certainly the bank, certainly the Commonwealth Bank, is here to try and help make that transition as smooth as possible.
Speaker 3:Does the bank have conversations with the federal government? I imagine it would be consulted fairly regularly. Do you ever get a sense about what's going on federally in terms of, again, regulations and what the policymakers are thinking?
Speaker 1:No, yes, it's definitely something that we do. We keep state and federal government departments across what we're doing, because they're actually often looking for ways to complement what we're doing and work in a coordinated way to support farmers, and they're also interested in what we're seeing and hearing from our customers, which is really valuable for them as well. There's no doubt that the world is moving towards net carbon zero and nature positive. We've seen a lot of change recently out of the US which could potentially be sending a signal that the world's kind of going back on these kind of commitments, but certainly areas like Europe, which is an export market for Australia, is steadfastly committed to these goals. So globally there's a bit of a mixed story, but at the end of the day I don't think these kind of things are going to go away. And again to my earlier point, there's opportunities in these areas of sustainability for producers that are definitely worth their time and having a look at.
Speaker 3:What about some of the carbon markets, if people are interested in those? It is again something that sort of changes. It's been fairly confusing in the past and again that's something that the federal regulators have established the market. But what's available and what's the role of a bank in that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So certainly the carbon market is an opportunity to earn carbon credits, particularly if you are planning to do some of these additional things on your farm. So if you're planning to plant some shelterbelts, if you're planning to undertake a program to uplift your soil carbon there's a couple of examples there that makes really good business sense. We know shelter belts can offer some good protection for livestock, some shade, improve mortality rates, help with heat stress, weight loss, all these kind of things. And soil carbon is obviously fantastic for helping your soil hold more moisture and manage compaction and improve the support for the soil biology, for example. So these kind of production benefits might make sense for your business. At the stage that you're up to, and if you can wrap that around a carbon project, you can potentially earn those carbon credits. Now you might choose to sell those and earn an additional income stream, sell some of them or actually use them in your business for your carbon accounting. That's completely at your discretion and, as I said, you earn carbon credits every year for 25 years in a carbon project. So you do have that sort of flexibility to sell sometimes and not at other times.
Speaker 1:But certainly the Commonwealth Bank. We have a range of solutions. We just think of carbon as another commodity that you farm, that you grow. So we can help with price risk management. We can help with some of the working capital requirements that you might need upfront to undertake the planting or any of the sort of program change, and then you might choose to sell some carbon credits to pay that back or, as I said, you have that sort of flexibility. We also have our carbon specialists just to help our customers. In a conversation you time with your banker, we can share some information and give you some kind of perspectives on what the bank thinks about the carbon market and how we're supporting our customers in it. And then the final thing is that we also have our ComBank Agri Green Loan, which is a really good interest rate for our customers who also want to use a traditional business loan to fund some of those costs of getting into environmental projects. So we've got a couple of options there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great, I really like that idea of thinking about carbon as a commodity. It just brings into a lens you can understand. Yeah, look, is there anything else that we haven't discussed? That is out there and should be on our radar when we're thinking about these sort of sustainability initiatives and where a bank could be in.
Speaker 1:Look, I think there's a lot of support for producers in this area. It's definitely worth a bit of time researching what's out there. There's various grants, there's various kind of information sessions that you can join in, and commonwealth bank has been offering workshops to help our customers understand what emissions reporting is. And you, we offer a tool for our customers to use on a complimentary basis, and that's just another example of some support for getting your kind of carbon reporting going, which would just become part of your annual accounts that you would do going forward. So it's really just worth your time to find out what's out there, talk to people, find out what they're doing, and I think, yeah, just talk to your bank manager to understand what's available. I think it's just a really great question is to say how can you support me in the sustainability space and see what comes back, and hopefully you get some good answers if you're talking to Commonwealth Bank.
Speaker 3:Finally, what excites you about the future of agriculture, particularly with the sort of ESG lens? What excites you for the next five to 10 years?
Speaker 1:I just think there's a lot of opportunity. So I'm a firm believer that with change comes opportunity. There's certainly a lot of change that's coming. Sometimes it does feel like too much too quickly, but if you have the kind of time and the capacity to get into it and understand it like we've been talking about, kirsten, I just think there's some really exciting things for farming businesses around potential to reduce the risk in some of their cash flows, to potentially find more profitable outcomes, to improve the performance and the value of their country. Which all farmers want to do is to leave their land in a better place for the future, and so I just think that there's just becoming a whole bunch of kind of opportunities to achieve those things, and I just find that really exciting to roll the sleeves up and get in amongst it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I really like that perspective. There's now so much more that our land could potentially be used for whether that's carbon credits or hosting a wind farm project and that's exciting. It opens up different markets that haven't been there before. Whether you are traditionally a sheep producer or whatever it is, I think that's really interesting, the sort of reframe of what our role is.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and there's this term that's used, called stacking the more kind of income that you can stack sustainably for the business and the financial resilience of the business. If you can find ways to include renewables that complement the agricultural production and meet your needs as a landholder, then that just sounds exciting to me.
Speaker 3:And agriculture is just constantly evolving. We don't really have a choice when it comes to climate change, but we do have a choice about how we adapt our businesses and our farming practices, and there's such opportunity in this too. So let's meet Leah Garnett, who shares some of the cutting edge research in emissions reductions in the dairy industry. Leah's not only a researcher but a dairy farmer too in Northeast Victoria, which is pretty cool to have both on the ground experience as well as the research. Dairy is a relatively new industry for Leah, but she's always had a strong connection to rural Australia and, as you're about to hear, that comes from a very unique upbringing.
Speaker 2:My parents were basically bird researchers and they took first they took a project on Cape York Peninsula so three years where we went and lived on a cattle station called Artema Station. So they studied it's the golden-tallered parrot for three years up there and we lived on the station and got to experience station life. And then they took another project on Kangaroo Island as well to study the glossy butt cockatoo. So then we moved to Cairns but we really kept in contact with those rural communities and particularly on the Cape we would go up there on weekends or in school holidays and get to do things on the station and also go out with my parents as well.
Speaker 3:Cool, like your parents were bird researchers. Yeah, do you look back and go? That's kind of unique.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, an interesting story as well, because they moved around so much too, which is, I think, that's pretty unusual as well, even if you meet other people whose parents are bird researchers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it was pretty cool Like moving around to such diverse places like Cape York Peninsula to Kangaroo Island very different places. How did you cope or thrive as a child? Did you love it or was it tricky?
Speaker 2:It was all I knew. Yeah, I had the best childhood and we had so many people around us, especially on the station. If mum and dad needed to go away, then we would stay on the station with the family that lived there. It was just a lot of fun really.
Speaker 3:Okay, you travelled to remote parts of Australia as a child. What happened after high school?
Speaker 2:We moved to Cairns and then my parents moved to Darwin too. But I really I never would have thought like I'm a dairy farmer now and I never would have thought that I would end up a farmer, let alone a dairy farmer. But then when I finished high school, I went and worked for the son of the people from our team in station. He was a manager for CPC on a station called Humber River in the Territory, so it's about halfway between Catherine and Kununurra, about 500 kilometres from both. His wife and I governess their kids, and then I was a station hand as well, but I was probably a fairly useless station hand because I did not have practical skills. But during that year there was just a few things during that year that made me realise that agriculture well a lot of agriculture is about science, and after a while, after I left there, I started to realise I really wanted to be in a science career. So I moved to Walker and studied ag science there.
Speaker 3:So how'd you end up on a?
Speaker 2:dairy farm, ag Science there. So how'd you end up on a dairy farm? Yeah, so at uni I met my partner, joel, and he was from a dairy farm. He was always like he would go home nearly every weekend or every second weekend to help, and sometimes I would go as well. But we went and got careers in agriculture. Most of my career has been, before dairy farming, was in agricultural extension and his is in agribusiness banking. Yeah, so we went and did that and lived in Griffith for a number of years and then we moved to Darwin. But we were always looking. We thought we would always buy like a block and lease it to Joel's parents as an outwalk, but then we found out that the property that we're on was coming up was going to go on the market. So we started thinking about how we could actually do it, because that was a long-term plan and, yeah, we're lucky enough to actually get it when it came up onto the market so you moved from darwin, which is certainly not dairy country, to the northeast of victoria.
Speaker 3:Is that right? Yeah, we're in minneapolis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're at moyu in northeast victoria and it's about half an hour from wangatta, south of Wangaratta. We've been here five years, yeah, yeah, so we bought, yeah, we lived across the road from the beach in Darwin actually, and to negotiate the property purchase, joel, he was so nervous but he walked across the road to the beach to just calm down because we had to hold our price at the price we wanted. And, yeah, he negotiated getting this property from the beach to just calm down because we had to hold our price at the price we wanted. And, yeah, he negotiated getting this property from the beach. And then we moved down and our life obviously completely changed. That was the middle of COVID I was six months pregnant, yeah, and we moved down here and started a lot of work to Joel's family had already done.
Speaker 2:They'd sown pastures, and so we went into a business arrangement with them. So they've got their own farm at Millewa, which is 20 minutes away from us, and they bought extra cows and they bought machinery. We started off. Our first tractor was actually a 50-year-old backhoe because it was the only thing available, which is fun when you're six months pregnant and you're trying to feed animals. It was just before we actually got dairy cows here. But heifers, hey, in an old backhoe and it's pouring with rain, it's freezing cold, it was exhausting and it was, yeah, it was really hard work.
Speaker 2:To start with, the farm hadn't been a dairy farm for maybe 18 months or two years. The dairy was in quite good condition. But just, we had a month before we had cows here, and then when we got cows there, we'd look at the paddock that they had to go into next and go, okay, okay, how do they get water? How do the? How do they get kept in? What pensive thing do we have to do to keep them in? And it was just, it was so easy to prioritize because it's just the next thing that's ahead. To get the cows into that paddock is just what we had to do. So, yeah, we were just busy doing that basically.
Speaker 3:Tell me about what you do at the dairy. How many cows? How does your farming system?
Speaker 2:work. We've really grown it over the five years we've grown it. The first year we had about 200 cows and we've grown it to now 340 cows. And this year we've actually just separated our business from Joel's parents business so that we can be independent farmers on our own, and that's why Joel can now go and leave the bank as well, which is really exciting. Yeah, and then we're a dryland farm and our average rainfall is 750 mil, so we can grow really good pasture in a good year. And that's really our goal is to grow as much pasture as we possibly can during the season and then conserve as much as we can so that we feed that out over the summer months. So that we feed that out over the summer months and sometimes this year it's been a lot longer, but up to six months of the year.
Speaker 3:What are pastures like? At the moment I'm in the southwest of Victoria and it's been very dry. Obviously have you had a bit more rain than us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have. Last year was dry, but we had cows fully on pasture in June and we felt like that was dry, but it was nothing compared to you guys. And then this year cows are on pasture but we're still feeding them as well. So we're nearly there. We're a couple of weeks away from being fully on pasture. So it's been quite a dry season, but we haven't had to cut water or anything. It hasn't been that dry. We're a bit better off. Hopefully we get a good spring. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So with our feeding, we've just intensified that feeding as well because it's been so dry this season. We've gone and bought a mixer wagon and then we're feeding all sorts of things in that mixer wagon to extend the amount of time that our silage will last, which, yeah, might. We've been quite happy with the milk production result we've got from that. So we'll look at that and see whether we do that every year and whether it's worth it to do that every year. And I think this is something that farmers don't actually realise a lot of the time is that a lot of what we do just to improve things step by step over time is actually helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions too. I think farmers should know that and be proud of that. We are so time poor and there are things that we want to do that we will do as we get more time as we move forward.
Speaker 2:But just as some examples of what we've done in the last five years we've planted some trees, we've done things to make the dairy more energy efficient. So the most recent thing that we've done is we've just installed a new vacuum pump that replaces. It might've been a 30-year-old vacuum pump, so we've replaced that with the newest technology that is far more efficient, but it's a significant difference in energy reduction. And then other things in the dairy, like replacing lights, like things like getting our fertilizer applications on right, and we just bought a new spreader that we can actually weigh what we're putting out, so we know what we put out, and then its spread pattern is better, so it the placement of that fertilizer is better as well. So our heifer rearing, getting heifers to the right weight on time so that their milk production per cow is better over their lifetime yeah, just as a few examples of what we have done.
Speaker 3:And I asked this question as someone who is involved in dairy as well. But I remember looking at how to reduce greenhouse gases in dairy and I googled it this would have been three or four years ago trying to find a tool that could help me measure it, and basically the information I got back was kind of like oh, you can't really do that with dairy, it's just too intensive, too many cows. But that can't be right and I know it's not right.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts on that? That's not the case and I think maybe things have changed since you looked as well, because there is a tool, there's an industry tool that you can use to measure your greenhouse gas emissions. Our milk companies are asking us to do that as well. So, like last year, westfly, bega and last year Bega came out and did it with me and they're going to be doing it. It's going to be expected for a lot of milk companies that everyone will do that. So the measuring support is there and it's just going to increase. There's so many things in the research pipeline that are coming that are really close to being available, but maybe they're not applicable to the grazing system yet. They just need little bits and pieces of work done on them, or we need there to be an economic structure that supports us to put these things onto farm, because a lot of them they cost a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so tell us about the research. But before you do that, what kind of research have you done and what's your involvement in this area?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when we moved down to the farm, I was already completing a master's in economic and regional development and part of that I continued to do that slowly between the farm and having two children and eventually I got that finished. But as part of that I did a dissertation on cost-reducing greenhouse gas emissions on dairy farms. When I finished that I thought some of that would be really useful for the industry and researchers in the industry to be able to draw on and researchers in the industry to be able to draw on. I got in touch with Richard Eckhart, who is from Melbourne Uni, who's one of the main experts in Australia and around the world in this area. So I said do you think this is worthwhile? I'm a dairy farmer. Would you like to write a paper with me that reviews all the different options of greenhouse gas abatements? Would you like to write a paper with me that reviews all the different options of greenhouse gas abatements? So yeah, we wrote that paper together. How cool yeah.
Speaker 3:What did you find out from that, or what was the research indicating?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's probably important that I talk about why that research. So for one, like I've said before, dairy produces greenhouse gas emissions, but also countries have set targets for greenhouse gas reductions. But also a lot of companies within our supply chain have either set targets or have the intention to set targets for emissions reduction as well. So, for example, the other day I was talking to a milk company who was saying that to supply their product into Woolworths they have to have it's a requirement for them to have a plan for their greenhouse gas reduction, and as part of those targets now they include what's called scope three emissions, which is just supply chain emissions essentially. So that requirement is going to flow through to dairy farmers and even for companies that don't have targets within Australia. Big companies in Australia are now starting to have to record their supply chain emissions publicly, and so there's going to be more and more transparency around this, and there's been a whole lot of research that's been done on different methods of greenhouse gas reduction.
Speaker 3:You mentioned earlier about that. There is a lot of research that's coming out that will be implemented. What is in the pipeline?
Speaker 2:So some examples are things like methane inhibitors that can be fed in feed, things like breeding for methane reduction, methane reduction vaccine.
Speaker 3:Oh, I've not heard of that. I've heard about asparagopsis and other kind of feed additives and breeding. Obviously, what's a methane vaccine?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's further away and for a long time it's been in the really early stages and they've been able to successfully do all the different stages needed but haven't been able to put them together. But with COVID I just learnt this the other day with COVID and mRNA vaccines there's been more progress happening on this, so it's hopefully starting to look like a more promising option, because it's such an easy option and it has such broad applicability as well across beef as well, and potentially sheep, and would it be reducing the methane emissions from an animal by how much?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know that yet. It's not at the stage. I'm totally going to be Googling this. Yeah, there's another one called early life programming, which is feeding young stock methane inhibitors and giving them a lifelong methane reduction by changing what happens in their rumen, which also is a bit further down the research pipeline as well. And then there's things that reduce nitrous oxide from our paddocks, which is a different greenhouse gas emission. So things like nitrification inhibitors that can go into our fertilizer or be sprayed on urine patches after the cows have been in the paddock. Things like planting different species for either methane reduction or nitrous oxide reduction, or things that I won't remember them all, but things that reduce methane that comes from our effluent ponds as well. So one of them is covering them, which is a well-established technology that's very expensive. And then there's a new technology where you can add something to the effluent which really clears it up, and they've accidentally found that actually almost totally removes the methane that comes from it as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow. How affordable are some of these options and do we need assistance, whether that's that's government grants or some other way of getting these technologies rolled out? So they're?
Speaker 2:just the everyday practices. It's a major lineage factor for a lot of, if not most, of these different things. And, as an example, to feed a methane inhibitor into our feed, if it was applicable in a grazing system which it's not yet, would cost us, for 340 cows would cost us 60 grand a year. Something like a nitrification inhibitor in our fertilizer would add $6,000 to our fertilizer bill and things like covering an effluent pond would only be worthwhile potentially worthwhile if we had over 1,000 cows. Gives you an idea of how much we're talking for some of these different strategies.
Speaker 3:What kind of incentives would you like to see that might help in terms of whether it's yet measuring this? So, whether it's you're reporting to your bank manager or the government that you can be rewarded, incentivized and helped to implement this?
Speaker 2:yeah, so this is quite an interesting space. There's actually a cloud-based platform that has started in the US. It's called Athien and it started at the start of 2024. So it's really new, but it's a really good example of something that could work globally. So what happens is farmers will go onto that platform and they get to choose different methods they would implement on their farm.
Speaker 2:So at the moment there's methane inhibitors that they could choose or different things to do in their management. So they're short-term things. They're not long-term things like planting out a paddock of trees or something like that, where you've got a commitment for a long period of time, but they're short-term things that reduce emissions for the period that you implement that strategy. Then they audit it according to their science-based auditing methods. According to their science-based auditing methods, and companies within the supply chain that want that emissions reduction for their supply chain targets are paying for the emissions reduction strategy. That is then transferred through Athlean back to the farmer and at this stage they've paid out. At the start of the year, they'd paid out $9 million to farmers already, just in the really early stages. So it's got a lot of growth to go, but it indicates that there's a demand there from companies for emissions reduction and it's backed by really big US companies as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's really interesting that it's coming from companies more so than governments or banks. I think dairy is quite an interesting one because there's more of that natural direct relationship with a supplier, a milk supplier, than I think in other industries. What do you see happening there potentially, or you already do have some form of reporting with Bega?
Speaker 2:you said yeah, that's all we've really had from Bega at this stage. I think milk companies are getting their baseline numbers and they'll record it over time, but that's all we're seeing so far is they want to record our numbers and, yeah, I haven't had any conversations about what that means for the future.
Speaker 3:What excites you about the future of your own dairy and then broader agriculture when you look towards the next five or ten years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they're probably different, slightly different answers for us versus broader agriculture.
Speaker 2:But for us, because Joel's been working off farm as well as on the farm we've had two kids and I've been doing some of this kind of work as well I'm just really excited for us to have a little bit more life on our farm. We've been doing the core things quite well, I think, but also time to just do the little things that have been neglected, that are less important, and then to have time as well to think about where we want to go next and what are the bigger projects that we want to do as well. In terms of the broader industry. It's probably quite a boring answer, but what really excites me is, particularly because of my background in extension, part of what I really love about farming is seeing research getting implemented on farm. It's one little step at a time, and so what excites me is just the little improvements, not the silver bullets, but the tiny little things that slowly get improved, step by step, and then you look back in 10 years and you think look at where we've come across the whole of agriculture.
Speaker 3:I think you're in like a really unique and great position for farmers in that you can bridge that research and practical side and do it quickly. As with research, it takes time to test it and then it's hard to roll it out While it's not scientific. You can actually trial things on your farm while you're researching them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can. When we have time to do more than just the everyday jobs that are required for that day on the farm, we will have more time to look at different things they can do and how we can implement them on our farm. Yeah, that's really exciting to think we'll be able to do that.
Speaker 3:You've mentioned time a lot and I know it's like the problem of every farmer because we're running businesses and every aspect of them. In the future, would you like to see more support? If this is becoming more of an imperative of measuring stuff and understanding our climate footprint, what sort of assistance is there going to be there? Is it just another job for the farmers? Sometimes I get frustrated because I think sometimes it's always placed on the farmer's shoulders and there's a whole lot of supply chain and everyone else around it, and where does that burden get?
Speaker 2:shared. I think these things have to fit into our farm system. So something like feeding a methane inhibitor it's simple because it just goes into our feed. Or if vaccinations come, then we're vaccinating the cows anyway. I think things that change the system are unlikely to be adopted. But I think things are coming that can fit into our system. I think you touched on the record keeping component. I think that's something. People have the records there and they'll be in a system like Xero or in a lot of pharmacies Easy Dairy. I really want to see those different computer programs that dairy farmers are using anyway integrated into. It's called the Dairy Carbon Calculator or a system where it can feed through as much as it can automatically. So there's not the double up of having to go and find the different information from the different sources, because it is a really time-consuming thing and it's not necessarily the core business of our farms as well.
Speaker 3:No, because you're busy already and it's probably not. A lot of farmers love to be farmers because they love being outdoors and being with their animals and doing stuff, not sitting down.
Speaker 2:I really love record-keeping because of the information that I can get out of it, but I find it difficult to pull all the information out that I need, so if that's me, then yeah, another dairy farmer. That's a lot harder for.
Speaker 3:Yeah, with your ag science degree and your research background and you love data. Yeah, and you're finding it hard. Then what hope do we have?
Speaker 2:We'll get there, though. We just need the systems in place to be able to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there are programs out there. I mean, look, you mentioned Xero, which would be like an obvious place, the accounting program, but there are more complex, I guess, ag tech type systems that are meant to record everything. Have you ever tried any of those?
Speaker 2:I love Excel, yeah, and so I keep everything on Excel and all my Excels talk to each other and I haven't found a system that can, because dairy has got paddock operations that you want to record and all the cow information that you want to record and then your milk production results you want to record. I haven't seen a system that for dairy that incorporates all those different things and has them, has all the information there that you can use to figure out the different things you need to figure out.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, can you please set up mine A personalised system? That would be amazing. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us, leah, and chatting about some of these issues. They're really important and it's been great to get your insights.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Kirsten.
Speaker 3:That's it for this episode of Ducks on the Pond. Thank you to Leah Garnett and Carmel Onions for coming on the podcast. Thank you to Farmers for Climate Action for this collaboration series. If you haven't listened to the previous episodes in the series, our first is Women as Changemakers in Ag, and then the second one is about climate smart farming, what it actually means and how it can look different depending on your setup.
Speaker 3:I also wanted to mention that our lovely duck, Jackie Elliott, is gearing up for Rural Women's Day, which, of course, is just around the corner in October. There are lots of events on around the country, so check out her website. Jackie is offering a 10% discount to the Ballarat event. Just use the code DUCKS2025 for an awesome lineup of speakers, workshops and fun on the 4th and 5th of October. And that's it for me for a little while. I will be taking a short break, but you know me, I like to pop up every now and then before I bring back a full season of Ducks on the Pond, which will be at the very beginning of 2026. I am looking for a sponsor for next season too, so if that's you, then please reach out. Or if you know someone who might be interested, please let them know. Head to the website ruralpodcastingcocom to reach out to me there. My name is Kirsten Diprose. This is a rural podcasting co production. Thank you again for listening and thank you for being such a great supporter of this podcast. See you soon.
