"Despite having to farm through the longest drought I've ever experienced, I have never had a more exciting time in farming than the past 18 months with eCOGENT". That reassuring message came from a top level farmer with nearly fifty years of Waikato dairying under his belt. The real cream, he said, was the carbon farming add-on. It had reduced the impact of the drought on his pastures by extending growth further into the drought and giving a worthwhile response to even small amounts of rain. And now that substantial rains have finally arrived his paddocks have greened up and are rocketing away, and he says he wont need to do any regrassing or use any nitrogen.

Maybe I should explain what the "carbon farming add-on" is. Regular readers of this column will know that eCOGENT.biz is a whole-farm strategic management process that at its core has a profit focus and a system allowing the prediction of profit from any changes in management. It is all about ensuring sustainable profitability for your business, not just this year but well into the future.

When I first developed the Process I didn't have any particular style of farming in mind. Any management system was fine as long as our analyses showed that it would keep on producing worthwhile profit increases. Over time, I and eCOGENT.biz members have come to realise that worthwhile sustainable profit increases require sustainable management practices, and that means thinking long term about soils, pastures, fertiliser regimes, grazing management and stock policies.

We now know that many of today's typical farming practices are unsustainable. Some give short-term gain but you end up with long-term pain. Take fertilisers, for example. How much of the soluble phosphate that is spread over paddocks gets washed into waterways and ground water by rain or is locked up in clay? How much soluble nitrogen gets washed away or ends up in the atmosphere?

What is the long-term sense in putting on urea, suppressing clover and having to put on more urea that will suppress clover even further? Why cram more stock onto the property and then have to spend huge amounts buying in or growing supplementary feed or pouring on the urea? The financial numbers just don't stack up, let alone the physical wear and tear and stress on stock, pastures and people.

Carbon farming, as we use the term, is about growing soils - managing pastures, fertilisers, and stock in a logical way that restores balance and longevity to the sward and increases topsoil depth quite rapidly. In doing so, huge amounts of atmospheric carbon are locked up in soil organic matter that holds moisture and provides better plant and animal nutrition.

As we heard at the Farming for Change Conference in February, a growing number of Australian pastoral farmers are farming carbon in this way very successfully, and being paid for the carbon credits they earn. That option is not here yet but it is coming, and it wont be long before our eCOGENT members will be earning carbon credits too.

Carbon farming using pastures is fast becoming the new paradigm of best farm business practice. Achieving a higher level of profitability with a lower environmental footprint is what eCOGENT.biz is committed to.

You can start carbon farming today if you want to.

You have a window of opportunity right now to achieve a kick-start to the process over the next couple of months. By doing so you will not only be working to make your business more sustainable but also you will be making a difference for your children and the future of the country.

Don't be put off by people who scoff at this. Many of them just want you to spend a lot of money with them on pasture renewal using short term grasses and soluble fertilisers.