A grazing family in Victoria has been issued 18,864 Australian Carbon Credit Units for the carbon its soil took up, which makes its property the highest-earning soil carbon project in the state, according to its project manager, CarbonLink. Tom and Sarah Whinney run beef, lamb and wool at Chatsworth House in the Western District.
Over its first five-year reporting period the project recorded a 10,127-tonne increase in measured soil carbon. After the project's own emissions were counted, that equalled 25,152 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent stored in the ground. The credits work out at 2.07 units per hectare per year.
The changes on the farm were ordinary ones done with care. The Whinneys applied compost and other nutrients to correct deficiencies, brought legumes into pasture and cropping, re-seeded and renovated pasture, and changed how they graze, with longer rest periods and subdivided paddocks. Soil organic carbon, fertility and resilience were already their priorities, the report says, and the project added a further income on top of those aims.
The result also shows how easily such a project can go wrong at the start. It was first registered with another provider in 2021 and moved to CarbonLink in 2025. CarbonLink says its technical review found limitations in the baseline measurements, which then had to be worked around, since a baseline stays with a project for its whole life.
CarbonLink project manager Santos Amadeo said getting the first measurement right is very important. His team worked within the existing baseline and changed the sampling and calculations so that the figures better reflected what was happening on the ground.
Chief executive Chris McCosker called soil carbon projects long-term undertakings that need practical management, reliable measurement and steady attention to compliance. These are the views and figures of the company managing the project, as relayed in the report. For a grazier weighing up the same step, the story shows that the first measurement can matter as much as the pasture work.
Source: Beef Central
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