How carbon farming won the west

Aug. 18, 2014, 4 a.m.

ON Peter Yench's sheep farm the bulldozers are ready. When they surge forward, trees will be ripped from the earth, clearing the land for grazing and crops.

Peter Yench

ON Peter Yench's sheep farm the bulldozers are ready. When they surge forward, trees will be ripped from the earth, clearing the land for grazing and crops.

Elsewhere another vast stretch of sparse, dry native forest stands on Mr Yench's land. It is hardly the Daintree, but like all forests it is a sink for carbon dioxide. If it too is brought down then the CO2 stored in the trees will be released, exacerbating climate change.

Mr Yench holds a permit to clear on his western NSW properties, Bulgoo Station and The Meadows. Traditionally the more land a grazier could clear the more sheep they could run, bolstering their economic return.

Reminded of an old farming adage that "the only good tree is a dead tree", Mr Yench smiles in recognition, but retorts: "yeah, but that's not right".

"You got to have both, your balanced country. That's the way I look at it."

Instead of clearing everything, Mr Yench has promised to keep almost 7000 hectares of forest on Bulgoo standing for 100 years. In exchange he receives carbon credits under the federal government's Carbon Farming Initiative. It has proved a healthy alternative revenue stream.

Quietly, another 30-odd landowners in western NSW have promised to do the same or are exploring the option. Like Mr Yench, many are based around the mining and grazing town Cobar. It has quickly become an unlikely national centre for carbon farming.

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How carbon farming won the west