A NSW woolgrower is thinking outside the square on how to attract sustainability premiums by having his wool certified as carbon neutral.
Chick Olsson from Four Seasons Farm, Kinglake, said he had made the decision to prove the carbon neutrality of his wool to add value in a difficult market.
It comes off the back of the Olsson family’s Queensland-based stock feed manufacturing business, Four Season Company also becoming carbon neutral thanks to all the extra farm gate carbon emissions.
The Olssons have also gone down the path of getting a veterinarian to audit operations to provide a gold standard welfare form.
”I thought if [carbon neutrality] could be attached to a wool clip and that wool clip actually covers all the transport costs to Europe with the excess carbon… would there be a premium for it?” Mr Olsson said.
”What I’m offering here to the market for the first time is a the complete package of welfare and environmental stewardship… there should be some premium for it.”
The business has gone through the welfare auditing process for four years, getting a Crookwell veterinarian to supervise the lamb marking and mulesing process to ensure that pain relief before and after all procedures.
Now that the clip is certified carbon neutral as well, Mr Olsson said they will be promoting both credentials to buyers before the clip was auctioned through Nutrien in Sydney in October or November.
The Olssons’ operation sees an average 1350 ewes managed across 1285 hectares with about 1250 lambs produced each year in a low intensity grazing system.
Around 40 bales of 19 micron merino wool are produced annually, along with a further 2 0 bales of cross-bred 2 6 micron wool and 5 bales of lambs wool.
The Olssons have worked with Ternes Scientific and Data Farming to calculate emissions profiles for the business.
Emissions of greenhouse gases from Four Seasons Farm amounts to 988 t carbon dioxide equivalent per year, with a total sequestration of on-farm carbon of 1533 t C02e.
In future the plan is to be able to produce carbon negative wool, by boosting the amount of native species such as wattle on the land.
”A lot of those species are very tannin- rich and when the sheep graze tannin with the right supplements, it massively reduces methane,” Mr Olsson said.
”It also increases biodiversity if you start bringing more Australian natives in, such as bees and pollinators, more parrots and so on.”
A question of premiums
Meanwhile premiums have been solidifying for wool certified through accreditation schemes, according to Independent Commodity Services principal Andrew Woods.
Premiums for Responsible Wool Standard wool in the 16 to 21.5 micron had dropped back during 2023 to between 20 to 40 cents per clean kilograms, down from premiums ranging from soc right up to 270c in 2022.
But Mr Woods said there had been some improvements, showing buyers were willing to chase those certifications.
“I think it would be fair to say there’s about 50 to 6oc clean across a lot of microns for Merino and they seem to be a bit more consistent,” he said.
”And there’s a little bit showing up for crossbreds as well… 30c or so and it seems to be a little more consistent… some weeks there’s nearly no volume so it’s hard to tell and it would be hard for the buyers to act on.
”People can just adopt this themselves with minimal fuss,” he said.
“The biggest cost might be your carbon neutrality statement which will cost you about $7000.
“If you’ve got a lot of natural resources and you’ve got good pastures and some tree cover, you’re probably carbon neutral already, you just haven’t got the number.
“The good thing about this is if it does get a small premium we will be able to take this to the whole Goulburn Crookwell district, which is now I think the largest fine wool growing area in the world as far as volume goes, and just roll it out through the district.”
With carbon neutrality a key part of the Wool 2030 Strategy, Mr Olsson said while some people say that Australian wool is carbon neutral, growers still had to provide proof of that.
“You have to show people the numbers of why each property is carbon neutral if you want customers to buy your product,” he said.