Your land transition opportunities, with zero clicks

TL;DR

CarbonCrop can now automatically identify agroforestry and land transition opportunities for your farm. With zero clicks you can see promising areas, types of activity, potential costs, new revenue streams, and farm productivity impacts. Start with an idea of your land’s potential, focus on the areas that seem worth a closer look, and stop kicking the can down the road.

Most farmers have a paddock or two that doesn't pull its weight. Too steep, too scrubby, too slow to recover after a dry spell. It’s probably crossed your mind at some point that there might be better options for that paddock - retiring it, erosion control planting - but turning that hunch into something concrete takes time and effort - both in short supply. So you kick the decision down the road and the paddock stays as it is. 

It’s easy to underestimate the impact of these delayed decisions - it feels like you can always follow up later, but the opportunity cost is real. We see it every day, with tens of millions of dollars of ETS revenue we’ve realised for the native forests of farmers who acted... and the unfortunate history of lost entitlements for many who waited.

We removed the effort of that first step 

Straight out of the box, CarbonCrop can now show you which areas of your farm might be improved with trees - based on slope, erosion risk, and how productive that land actually is. You can see the possible interventions, estimated costs and returns. 

For each area, you'll see what it could cost to plant, what it might return - carbon revenue from space-planted poplars you can still graze under, or longer-term value from native retirement - and what the opportunity cost is of moving that land out of grazing.

This isn’t a static report. All the tools are there to take this starting point and adapt it to a plan that works for your farm. You get a sense of the opportunity and what else that land could be doing. We’ve taken this first step for you to eliminate the cost of not knowing so you can make an informed decision about what’s best for you and your land.

A real farm, real numbers

650 hectares of hill country. The map shows what CarbonCrop identified across the property - the highest erosion risk, least productive ground as candidates for native retirement; the moderate risk areas as candidates for space-planted poplars the farmer can still graze under. 

Roughly one in six hectares identified as an opportunity to boost returns, resilience or both.

	Permanent native	Space planted poplars
Potential area	19 ha	120 ha
Establishment cost	$67,000	$180,000
Productivity impact (annual)	$0	-$14,000
Carbon opportunity (annual 50Y avg)	$6,800	$21,000
Overall NPV (50Y)	$33,000	$190,000

Important note: The space planted poplars carbon yield figures above use conservative forecasts for space-planted regimes. This could increase materially through using the default ETS tables, depending on the specifics of your ETS registration. We're happy to discuss what this means for your situation. Refer to footnote for further assumptions.

The full picture of your forest and land

This analysis sits inside CarbonCrop alongside everything else you'd use to plan and manage land use change - forest detection, ETS eligibility assessment, carbon forecasting, scenario modelling. The transition opportunity report builds on the same underlying data. 

If you have established forest - natives, regenerating scrub, space-planted poplars or willows - you can see what's ETS eligible and what it could earn you.

You'll also see areas of existing vegetation that could qualify for non-ETS opportunities including voluntary carbon market projects, supply chain carbon programs, and other nature-based markets.

Existing forest cover and carbon sequestration heat map

Voluntary carbon schemes and nature credit pilots are still in their early days. But knowing how much of this you have, and where it sits, puts you in a better position as these opportunities develop.

What this means at scale

The landowner is the unit of change for initiatives that depend on farm level action. Farmers will make decisions that make sense for their land, their business, and their values. At the same time, the challenges we collectively face are larger than can be solved by a single farm.

What we need are farm level solutions which have the potential to deliver regionally and nationally significant opportunities and impacts.

We've done this farm scale analysis across entire catchments. This gives an complete picture of the regional opportunity, and a fast track for landowner engagement.

This is an example of the potential across one catchment.

Total catchment area	~300,000 ha
Native retirement opportunity	2,500 ha
Space planting opportunity	13,100 ha
New forest implementation cost	$28M
New forest carbon opportunity (50Y average)	$3.4M/yr
New forest NPV (50Y)	$25M
Existing biodiverse native forest area	43,000 ha
Ongoing native forest carbon removals	81,270 TCO2e/yr

At this scale, these implementation costs don't happen all at once. This is money spent within the region as part of a staged multi-year programme.

If you're curious what this looks like for your catchment or region, the second piece in this series goes into how the landscape-scale analysis works - and what it means for how restoration projects are run.

Find out what your land could be doing

If you want to understand what your land could be doing - transition opportunities, existing forest, what they mean for your farming business - register your interest below and we'll be in touch.

Register your interest

Footnote on Assumptions Made:

1. Carbon price of $55 ongoing

2. Low cost native establishment = $3,500/ha

3. Space planted poplars @50 stems per ha establishment = $1,500/ha

4. All establishment costs are in the first year

5. No fencelines are moved or laid. We're optimistic about the potential of virtual fencing to avoid this cost.

6. Farm productivity estimated using mean farm productivity from Beef + Lamb Economic Survey Quintile Analysis

7. Pasture productivity of high landslide risk areas for permanent native retirement assumed zero

8. Pasture productivity for space planted poplars assumed 15% drop in productivity at 14m x 14m spacing

9. Standard MPI carbon curves used for carbon yield for native forest.

10. Discount rate 6.50% for NPV calculation