Buckleboo, Yudnapinna stations in outback South Australia to become state's largest carbon farming sites
Buckleboo Station on northern Eyre Peninsula in South Australia in 2021 was set to become the site of a major carbon farming project
Image courtesy Australian Integrated Carbon
Buckleboo and Yudnapinna pastoral stations in South Australia's outback are set to become two of the state's largest carbon farming projects.
Buckleboo (northern Eyre Peninsula) and Yudnapinna (80 kilometres northwest of Port Augusta) stations have secured projects that will pay them to sequester more than three million tonnes of carbon between them over the next 25 years.
AI Carbon managed the bid for both stations and chief executive Adam Townley said they were among the biggest projects in South Australia. Combined, the projects would tuck away enough carbon to account for an average of 20,000 cars per year for the next 25 years: "They'd probably rank in the top 10% of projects sitting in South Australia at the moment, and there's a number of other landholders that are reviewing opportunities for carbon projects as well."
At the 2021 price of carbon, each project was estimated to be worth roughly $40 million over the next 25 year. Carbon farming is any change to agricultural or land management that can reduce emissions such as nitrous oxide and methane or store additional carbon in vegetation and soils. These changes in practices could provide many benefits to landholders. These could include earning Australian carbon credit units that can be sold and provide another income stream to the landholder, as well as increased profitability, production and biodiversity.
In 2016, 12 South Australia Arid Lands pastoral properties had workshops to explore the viability of carbon farming on their properties, compared with their current pastoral business activities. Feasibility studies were done on properties representing beef, meat sheep or wool sheep herds in each of these main land systems.
