Pastoral Carbon Farming

This technology that has been developed over the past 10 years by COGENT Farming Business Systems Ltd.

Research has revealed that by utilising international best business practices, both DairyPoint for dairy farmers and StockPoint for dry stock farmers, as the process developed, are able to identify profit windows on a daily basis that allows significant enhanced profits to be achieved on a regular basis on a full range of farms from Southland to Northland.

Three main areas of improvement have been identified and achieved - Better production from higher quality pastures as measured by Brix levels, better higher quality soils as measured by visual assessments and carbon levels. The right pastoral residuals, stocking rate, calving / lambing weaning / drying off date as measured by daily profit.  As well as healthier animals as measured by lower incidence of : – grass staggers, milk fever, internal parasites, mastitis, empty rates, etc.

More profit  is achieved from quality more nutrient dense pastures, correct fertiliser levels and type and more accurate sizing of herds and therefore healthier, fully fed animals.  And by adopting a responsible sustainable environment approach a number of  trends have been achieved such as less pugging and therefore soil damage, more permanent multi-species pastures, reduced use of soluble fertilisers and reduced supplementary feeding all determined and achieved by measuring daily profit.  And so from these practices, additional benefits has been the build-up of organic matter in the soil and the consequent increase in carbon as measured to a depth of one metre in the soil..

International expertise has been sort, including pastoral soil scientists, analytical chemists, and farm business management specialists, to set up protocols that are currently awaiting validation under the VCS international programme  A number of eCOGENT members throughout New Zealand are now practising pastoral carbon farming technology and are achieving upwards of 25 VCU/ha to sell on the Voluntary Carbon Market.  . 

eCOGENT has now developed CarbonPoint – a robust and accountable management regime to measure, capture and store carbon in the soil.  Protocols have been established as explained above

It should be noted that carbon sequestration is just one benefit of pastoral carbon farming.  Others include improvements in the health of soil, plants, livestock, the environment, GHG emissions, and in the quality of the food produced for human consumption. 

While interest in pastoral carbon farming is increasing, the number of farmers involved is at present still small.  Further research is needed with a larger sample of farmers to verify the advantages identified by eCOGENT members but such a research programme is beyond the resources of a small company.

In recent months eCOGENT has established SoilPoint an independent soil testing and fertiliser recommendation service in association with Kinsey Agricultural Services Inc.  This is an international organisation working in seventy countries throughout the world