Suncorp Bank backs Aussie farmers through carbon farming

Voice over
0:05: Out the back of Bourke. It’s a popular Australian phrase, used to describe anywhere remote, isolated and hard to reach. But for Peter Ponder and his family, it’s home.  

Peter Ponder
0:17: We’re about 220 kilometres west of Bourke. The property Emaroo is about 125,000 acres. We farm sheep. Merino Sheep and cattle. We’ve been here since 1988. 

Voice over
0:33: Three years ago, they decided to make a change. 

Peter Ponder
0:37: The drought that we went through, up until about the end of '17. We sort of realised that we needed some other diverse income from something and carbon was it. 

Voice over
0:49: In partnership with Greencollar, Peter began farming carbon, along with sheep and cattle. Increasing the native vegetation across the property, to capture and store CO2. 

Louise Nott
0:58: Human induced regeneration is a method under the emissions reduction fund, whereby landholders are incentivised to make a land management change.  

Voice over
1:06: Such as improved fencing, to eliminate the feral animals that feed on native plants.  

Louise Nott
1:11: It's all about managing your grazing pressures whether that be from domestic livestock. Making sure that you are actually rotating them and resting periods. So that could be rotational grazing around from one paddock to the other, allowing that native pasture to actually come back, regenerate, so that there's more available feed on the ground.

Voice over
1:28: Reduced grazing pressure benefits young trees and shrubs as well. Regenerating into a native forest. Monitored and measured by Greencollar, they calculate the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere, and sell credits to companies like Suncorp Bank.

Amanda Lee
1:44: This is our way of demonstrating that we are doing good now and we are able to remove the emissions from the atmosphere that we are putting in there through operating our business. And I think that is such an important part of banking you can feel good about. We want our customers to feel good about the bank they choose everyday.  

Voice over
2:01: Customers like Jim Strachan, who has also become a carbon farmer.  

Jim Stachan
2:06: Suncorp Bank have been great for us. I mean we have had a wonderful relationship with them for a lot of years. During the droughts in particular when times were tight, they supported us.  

Voice over
2:13: A situation Jim hopes to have future-proofed, by diversifying his income.  

Jim Stachan
2:18 We've now developed waters, put in fencing, new sheds, new equipment, and cashflow and the consistency of cashflow from the carbon farming has allowed us to do that.  

Voice over
2:27: Seven years into the project, high above his 19,000 hectare property Lakemere, it’s clear to see the benefits of carbon farming, aren’t just financial.  

Jim Stachan
2:37: We’re half environmentalists anyway. If we don’t look after the land, it doesn’t look after us. And this works hand in hand.  

Peter Ponder
2:42: It makes a great difference having the forestation on the land.  

Voice over
2:46: And creates certainty for the next generation, like Peter’s daughter Hannah and his grandson James.  

Hannah Mooring
251: My father and I were mustering cattle the other day and the regeneration of trees and things that I don’t remember seeing. The country has really had the opportunity to take off and put down a lot of seed into the seed bank for the future as well. We’re not replacing the rainforests out here. We don’t have rain forests here. We have what we have and I think we’re doing what we can with what we have.

Voice over
3:21: To create a brighter future.

Hannah Mooring
3:24: James, if he wants to be a famer and he wants to farm out here, we want to give the country to him the better than what we had it, I think everyone wants that.