Project lead: Farmanco
Project overview
This project developed an online carbon calculator (G-GAF) for both broadacre cropping and livestock, using the University of Melbourne Greenhouse Accounting Framework, which was integrated into Farmanco’s cloud data capture and benchmarking platform.
While a significant volume of data is produced by agricultural machinery systems and proprietary software, this data is not readily available for integration with other platforms for broader applications.
A second goal of the project was to trial bringing a more granular and automated approach to gathering data from broadacre farming buisnessess. This was achieved by intergrating grower data from the John Deere Operations Centre via API. This data can be used by farmers for determining best practice, profitability, or sustainability measures at an individual paddock level, rather than enterprise level, beyond the initial purpose of the data.
The overall objective of the project was to streamline data collection and calculation processes, offering insights into business performance, profitability, and carbon emissions.
Impacts and Results
As Australia endeavours to reduce its carbon footprint, it is crucial for industries to understand their emissions.
The creation of this combined cropping and livestock carbon calculator has simplified the carbon audit process for mixed enterprises. Leveraging existing benchmarking data, the tool gives farmers a comparative view of their business emissions within their peer group. This information can be used to explore emissions reduction best practices.
The enhanced calculation capabilities of the calculator have bolstered the adoption of carbon audit from Aglytica’s general benchmarking activities. Aglytica observed a 9.8% increase in businesses conducting CO2 audits from season 2022 (223 audits) to season 2023 (245 audits).
This project was funded by the Australian Government’s Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program and was initiated through the South-West WA Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub.
Cover photo: Farmanco’s Profit Analyser, Farmanco
Collaborators
