Helping to make carbon farming easier

Nelson company CarbonCrop co-founder Nick Butcher says its biggest hurdle was farmer understanding of what's involved in becoming a carbon farmer and managing their holdings and obligations going forward.

Butcher says his company grew out of discussions at the Nelson Artificial Intelligence Institute in 2020 around the possibility of using AI and satellite imagery to help identify forests that would be eligible for carbon credits.

The system can now identify eligible growth, "even in the most difficult native forests," and help verify that carbon is being sequestered to satisfy the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) rules.

Butcher says that, beyond the underlying identification system, CarbonCrop now has a package of software to facilitate carbon farming in a way they believe will have value to the carbon farming sector around the world.

"Our goal was to package it up into something that was easy for landholders to get started with, interact with, understand, and then make the best decision for them and their property," he told Rural News.

CarbonCrop has no upfront fee but charges a success fee when the customer gets a return.

"Our whole mission was to make it easy for people to choose to be a carbon farmer. They may still choose not to be but it shouldn't be because it's too hard or too expensive," Butcher explains.

The company believes there is about 150,000ha of eligible native forest not yet registered in the ETS. This represents $90 million per year in unrealised carbon credits.

However, CarbonCrop has already facilitated $25 million, paid out under the ETS to more than 300 landowners.

The company has partnered with US-based Planet, which boasts the world's largest fleet of earth observation satellites, providing the highest frequency satellite data commercially available.

"It's as close to live monitoring of forests as is possible in the industry, ending the reliance on inconsistent image quality without the need to own their own satellites."

Butcher says it is mainly aimed at farmers rather than foresters because foresters already tend to know about the requirements since carbon credits are alread a huge part of their commercial model.

CarbonCrop says it is on a mission to make it simpler for landowners to get paid to protect and restore forests by giving them easy access to carbon markets.

"This delivers stronger farm economics, less carbon in the atmosphere heating up the planet, and improved climate resilience and biodiversity of our landscapes."

The company recently presented at the Carbon Forestry Conference in Rotorua, where Butcher says they got a lot of interest.