On-Farm Emissions Action Plan Pilot
The On-Farm Emissions Action Plan Pilot is part of the Victorian Government’s commitment under the Agriculture Sector Emissions Reduction Pledge to provide practical information, tools and services to support farmers to understand and reduce emissions.
The Pilot will work with up to 250 farm businesses across the state to estimate their on-farm emissions profile and identify potential actions to manage and reduce emissions while maintaining productivity and profitability. Participants will then be eligible for grant funding to co-fund recommended actions from a total pool of up to $5 million. The Pilot covers Victoria’s key agricultural industries.
Agriculture Victoria will work with a select number of producers interested in understanding and reducing their emissions and willing to help other farmers by sharing their learnings from the Pilot. On-farm emissions assessments and action plans will be delivered in collaboration with industry partners.
To support industry partners, Agriculture Victoria has started a Community of Practice for farm advisors to build capability across the sector and improve the emissions reduction advice being provided to Victorian farmers.
Agriculture Victoria will share information, insights and lessons from the Pilot including case studies that will be published as they become available.
For more information email: actionplanpilot@agriculture.vic.gov.au.
Julian Carroll:
We're in Mudgegonga, which is in Northeast Victoria. We're on a commercial self-replacing beef enterprise. We mainly produce feeder steers.
Brad Costin:
So Agriculture Victoria has set up the On-Farm Emissions Action Plan Pilot to help producers understand their emissions on their farm, and then also helping them act upon that number as well.
Julian Carroll:
We are motivated to get involved in the On-Farm Emissions Action Plan Pilot because we are really interested in this conversation around on-farm carbon. We think it's important to understand our own carbon footprint or our emissions intensity as part of our risk mitigation strategy, and also because we think there's going to be a marketing component to it in the coming years.
Brad Costin:
Julian and other farmers are helping provide us with feedback and how we can better improve the process for farmers to understand their emissions profile.
Julian Carroll:
I think the biggest surprise for us and probably for most people is just how much enteric emissions, the methane that comes from our cattle digesting grass contributes to our footprint.
Brad Costin:
The Pilot is that we want farmers to know their number and learn about their number, what goes into it, and helping them act what practical things on farm they can do to help lower their agricultural emissions.
Julian Carroll:
I think going into the analysis, I expected that there would be a number of sources that we could potentially work on to improve our carbon use efficiency to see that 80% of it was all about enteric emissions, and that's a number that's going to be consistent with most beef producers. It pretty clearly sharpens your focus onto your animal production. Productivity and reducing your carbon emissions are intrinsically linked, and so for us, thinking about how we can be the most productive we can with our cattle, we think strongly about our genetics, about our nutrition, and about our monitoring.
So thinking about genetics, it's important that we're choosing bulls that align with our breeding objective, and we're also using some relatively new technology for genomics analysis of our commercial breeders so we can get some insight into those females and into traits that are otherwise invisible. From the monitoring perspective, we've got an Optiweigh system in the paddock now, so we can really keep a close eye on our animal performance, especially our young animals as they're growing. So to address nutrition and specifically growth rates in young cattle, we've decided to upgrade our feeding systems in our stock containment areas.
Brad Costin:
Each farm is very different in the way that its emissions and it's also its ability to sequester carbon, so it's a very much an individual thing, so that's where sitting down and understanding livestock inventory and the area that you've got to trees and the age of those trees is really important.
Julian Carroll:
We already have quite a large area of trees on our farm and trees being our primary opportunity to sequester carbon. Our tree area is about 17% of our total acres, but our tree age is really young, so they're not going to hit their straps for another 10 years or so. We'll see our sequestered carbon lift from about 70 tons to 270 tons by 2030.
Brad Costin:
It might seem overwhelming or very complicated to understand your emissions, but there are some very easy to use tools and calculators out there that can help.
Julian Carroll:
Getting across your carbon footprint is a really valuable exercise. I think it's important that you need to know your number and how you compare to your peers. And I'd also recommend people consider combining it with business benchmarking, which you can do with the Victorian Livestock Farm Monitor Project.
Speaker 3:
Authorized by Victorian Government, 1 Treasury Place, Melbourne.
Frequently asked questions
Starting in 2022, the Pilot is a 3-year initiative to support up to 250 Victorian farmers and growers to estimate and understand their on-farm emissions profile, develop an emissions reduction action plan, and apply for a grant to implement recommended actions from a pool of up to $5 million. The Pilot is a key initiative under Victoria’s first Agriculture Sector Emissions Reduction Pledge.
A key objective of the Pilot is to develop a variety of farm emissions case studies to maximise insights across industries, commodities, farm sizes and geographic regions.
The Pilot focuses on action at the farm business level and building farmers’ emissions understanding and capability. The Pilot will focus on the options available for farm businesses to implement actions and is also an opportunity to explore and share the impacts of a variety of actions in diverse farming environments.
Participants are provided with a report that estimates their farm emissions profile and an On-Farm Emissions Action Plan with suggested options on how to measure, manage and reduce their farm emissions profile.
Participants can then apply for a grant to implement recommended actions. For further information, please refer to the grants section.
Please note that On-Farm Emissions Action Plan rounds have now closed (as of April 2024) and there will be no further calls for expressions of interest under the current program. However, you can register your interest to receive regular updates, technical information and newsletters about emissions reduction on farm, including updates on the wider Agriculture Sector Pledge Program.
For more information you can email: actionplanpilot@agriculture.vic.gov.au
The Pilot commenced in June 2022 and has delivered a series of rounds focused on selecting farm businesses from each region and commodity group. The Pilot called for expressions of interest over nine rounds between June 2022 through to April 2024 and now the participants selected are developing farm emissions action plans. Many participants are also applying for grants to implement emissions reduction projects on-farm.
Please note that rounds have now closed and there will be no further calls for expressions of interest to seek farm businesses participants under the current program.
As participants progress through the program, they will be actively sharing their Pilot experiences with their wider industry networks to assist how we tackle emissions, now and into the future.
A farm emissions specialist will work with each participant to interpret emissions and carbon data and discuss potential actions specific to each farm. Pilot farm participants will then be eligible to apply for funding to undertake an action which supports implementing their customised emissions action plan.
There are a range of emissions and carbon calculators that are used across agriculture industries which are at various levels of development. Agriculture Victoria has reviewed these tools and will use the most up-to-date and appropriate for each sector.
The Community of Practice has been created for farm advisors who are interested in working with Agriculture Victoria to improve emissions advice for Victorian farmers.
For more information email actionplanpilot@agriculture.vic.gov.au
Pilot participants will be eligible to apply for two types of grants:
- Action Plan grants (on completion of personalised On Farm Emissions Action Plan) and
- Innovation Fund grants (when the next round is announced later in 2024)
The Pilot program guidelines explain the eligibility criteria, considerations, and process for participants to apply for grant funding:
The Action Plan grants aim to support participants to implement emissions reduction projects from their personalised On-Farm Emissions Action Plan. Further information about how to apply for an Action Plan grant will be provided to each participant following completion of their On-Farm Emissions Action Plan. Participants can also review the Pilot program guidelines to read the funding criteria and other requirements such as the minimum $1:$1 (participant:government) cash co-contribution.
The table below explains the types of actions that may be considered for grant funding.
Category | Example |
|---|---|
Capital works | Construction and structural improvements |
Engaging services | Consultant for on-farm testing, advice, design or plan; participation in training |
Demonstration project | On-farm demonstration/trial of a technology or farm practice |
Plantings | Shelterbelts and environmental plantings; farm forestry (on a case-by-case basis and only if ineligible for funding under other government programs) |
Energy | Actions that reduce emissions (on a case-by-case basis and only if ineligible for funding under other government programs) |
The primary purpose of the Innovation Fund is to trial and evaluate new and innovative ideas to significantly reduce on-farm emissions. This will then support case studies for learning and collaboration to be developed.
Projects must demonstrate innovation and credible potential for significant reduction in on-farm emissions. Projects that utilise existing or standard farm practices and technology will need to articulate how the proposal demonstrates innovation in a Victorian setting to be considered.
The first round of the Innovation Fund closed in February 2024. The Department will directly notify Pilot participants about any announcements for a second round later in 2024.
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