RegenCo helps farmers sustain the land

RegenCo works with landholders to identify and develop carbon and natural capital regeneration projects that diversify income, secure long-term food supply and environmental resilience, in line with landholder’s land and enterprise objectives.

Supporting farmers’ ability to balance their social, environment and financial goals to achieve a strong agricultural triple bottom line is important to RegenCo.

We help landholders diversify their revenue streams through the creation and sale of carbon credits. RegenCo’s natural capital business – with shared ownership between Australian farmers, directors and investors – complements landholders’ existing land management practices to maximise profit and productivity, while regenerating the land and restore biodiversity.

The ‘Now’

Currently, RegenCo provides services and technology for measuring and reporting on carbon farming projects. Carbon farming is farming in a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and/or captures and holds carbon in vegetation and soils. It describes activities that can increase the productivity of a farm by increasing the total amount of carbon stored on a property and amplifying the impact of carbon in the ecosystem. The carbon can be stored in soil, litter, grasses, shrubs and trees.

Farmers stand to benefit from informed decision making regarding the potential and impact of carbon farming on their property. This is the ability to map carbon potential and understand how carbon farming impacts the bottom line.

RegenCo uses scalable technology to make carbon accessible for farmers. The imagery these sensors collect helps RegenCo understand the density and height of landscape patterns including trees and vegetation. This enables RegenCo to estimate, model and track carbon content. On ground measurements are taken to confirm and validate what is on the ground.

During the design phase, RegenCo works with the people who have managed the landscape to capture their knowledge and lived experience. The technology is used to quantify and validate the data, which is an important aspect of project management.

RegenCo uses this information to predict carbon credit potential for farmers. RegenCo’s tech platform figures out the carbon potential, model the trees and vegetation, and monitor their growth. The bigger the tree, the more carbon it has captured.

Regenerative Agriculture

While agriculture is one of the oldest practices in the world, it’s still in its early stages in Australia. Over the past 200 years, farmers have continued to innovate and find new ways to conserve the landscape whilst becoming more productive.

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach which includes restoring and regenerating the land as you work it. This presents an opportunity to embrace and harness nature’s inherent processes and properties to work the land.

But adoption has been limited, as many farmers are concerned about how a regenerative agriculture approach will impact their bottom line.

Why should farmers partner with RegenCo?

RegenCo works for landholders, not for large corporates. Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) projects are the most common vegetation carbon projects undertaken by landholders across Australia.

A HIR project improves the natural capital on which the business is based by storing carbon, but it also provides additional revenue, by adding another enterprise and income stream into the business.

A Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) project runs for 25 years, starting from the day the project is registered. RegenCo instils trust in farmers to optimise carbon and make carbon farming cost-effective.

For example, a farmer might be keen on integrating carbon farming on their property but is hesitant due to the need to manage stocking rates, and not knowing how this will impact their bottom line.

RegenCo helps farmers manage the process of balancing the carbon project and stocking numbers. RegenCo works with landholders to establish the stocking capacity of the land outside of the carbon potential areas, and then based on their financial objectives, identify how to best incorporate eligible areas of the property into the carbon project. This process is undertaken with enterprise modelling to show the financial impact of revenue loss on stocking rates and the revenue gains from carbon credits sales.

This gives the farmer peace of mind around managing stocking rate with the money generated by the carbon project.

Natural Capital

RegenCo advocates for the measurement and preservation of natural capital, with the improvement of natural capital across our landscapes as our long-term goal. Carbon is the first step in financially valuing our environment for all its properties and benefits.

RegenCo sees a future in which financial markets will value the broader benefits of natural capital as a means of driving biodiversity conservation and restoration. RegenCo will support farmers and landholders in accessing those markets as the concept matures and develops.

Future Possibilities

Farmers want to work with a trusted provider who can help holistically advise on their farm and enterprise, balancing the seemingly opposing outcomes of economic performance and sustainability, environmental regeneration and carbon sequestration.

RegenCo’s is developing a technology platform which will help farmers to make enterprise and land management decisions based on collecting and collating the numerous data inputs and providing actionable insights to improve their properties.