On the back of a number of exciting developments for RLF’s soil carbon business, including the formation of an innovative strategic alliance with Commonwealth Bank (CBA), combined with increasing levels of corporate interest in reducing and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions - carbon farming is more topical than ever.
Soil carbon projects aim to reduce atmospheric carbon by storing it in the soil, primarily through increased plant material and microbes in the soil, along with deeper root growth. According to a recent CSIRO report, nature-based solutions such as soil carbon projects prove highly effective for carbon storage. Aside from being an effective tool for reducing emissions from the agriculture sector, soil carbon projects also represent a long-term investment and source of income for farmers.
Soil carbon projects have taken off in Australia's compliance-based Emissions Reduction Fund carbon market scheme, with the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) reporting the number of Emission Reduction Fund projects registered in each state and territory across Australia on a monthly basis.
The soil carbon method has tight controls on how soil carbon increases are estimated, with RLF’s Hillston Soil Carbon Project recently being added to the CER’s register of projects as an approved emissions reduction scheme. An irrigated project, RLF is boldly attempting to generate Australia’s fastest Australian Carbon Credit Unit via this pilot, seeking to generate ACCU’s after 1 – 2 years, compared with the typical turnaround of 4-5 years. The irrigation system used in this project, providing the opportunity to improve plant biomass production year-round, removing rainfall variability from the equation.
RLF Carbon, a 100% owned subsidiary of RLF AgTech is setting itself apart from other soil carbon projects given its development of a proprietary system - ‘Accumulating Carbon in Soil System (ACSS) for which a provisional patent has been filed. This patent covers the process and framework for a sustainable system, including the use of RLF’s high quality plant nutrition products to allow farmers to potentially generate ACCUs while achieving higher crop yields, better quality food and increased on-farm profits.
From a farmer’s perspective, the ACSS system has many benefits given that it doesn’t require a change in land use, with many registered soil carbon projects to date focused on tree and pastoral crops, but instead focuses on the application of RLF plant technology program to address material soil deficiencies, replacing previous plant nutrition approaches.
McKinsey’s 2022 Global Farmer Insights provides a consideration of the trends in mindsets and behaviors towards the key topics that are shaping the future of agriculture, seeing 44% of respondents indicating that they anticipate the most profit to be generated from new yield increase products.
Soil carbon sequestration is a key component of the Australian Government’s technology-led emissions reduction policy and has the potential to be the most significant carbon dioxide removal mechanism we have available. Increasing the amount of carbon stored in agricultural soils not only helping to mitigate rising greenhouse gas emissions but also improving the productivity and resilience of agricultural systems, seeing RLF’s innovative and proactive pursuit to commercialise, scale and generate high-quality Australian carbon credits a compelling proposition.