ON FARM NATIONAL CARBON REDUCTION BUSINESS MANAGEMENTC Profit driver 4: animal welfare A valuable Mark and Eve also strive for best practice animal welfare to maintain a healthy, efficient flock. business They started breeding clean-breeched sheep five years ago and now only 15% of their flock are treated with a breeching “We use a cryogenic liquid treatment whenprocess to reduce the risk of flystrike. proposition undertaking the breeching process and these sheep have no set-back, in fact it adds $9/head in value to lambs in weight Acourse in business Although Nelle had attended gain on its own, for a $3/head treatment,” management isn’t other business skill development he said. only beneficial for programs, she came home from enterprises going Business EDGE with a new focus. The carbon-paved road ahead Mark would like to reach a stage where through a growth phase or “It provided the framework to tie on-farm efficiencies mean Jigsaw succession planning. together all the data we’ve been Farms moves from carbon neutral to collecting so we could analyse it Business EDGE has helped Nelle objectively without the emotion having excess carbon offsets to sell into Stevenson (pictured) keep a finger the market. of the season or any other factors on the pulse of the established impacting us,” she said. One of the barriers to Mark and Eve selling grazing business she runs with her more carbon credits is the fact most of husbandt‘s neverSimon, which is going “I been so important for their trees were planted before 2010, througha consolidation phase producers to run professional . making them ineligible for selling into the businesses to demonstrate Simon and Nelle took over to consumers and the wider carbon-offset market under the Emissions ‘Villamosa’ in 1983 after separating Reduction Fund. community that we are invested in from a family aggregation. managing our land sustainably.” “If producers undertook what we did in With their two daughters working the past now, they would be able to enter Nelle has since attended two off-farm, the Stevensons are now follow-up sessions, and said the into the carbon-offset market, or keep the assessing what direction to steer credits to offset their own emissions as supportive environment and the business in. information provided helped part of a branding or supply chain strategy,” Mark said. Nelle signed up for a two-day to motivate her and grow MLABusiness EDGE workshop in her confidence to adjust their “I believe carbon neutrality could be a point 2016 to gain a deeper insight into business model. of differentiation for Australian producers how to use financial information to in the international market.” measure business performance. Mark Wootton E: markwootton@jigsawfarms.com.au jigsawfarms.com.au University of Melbourne research report: publish.csiro.au/AN/AN16438 Climate Institute: climateinstitute.org.au Read MLA’s CN30 report: mla.com.au/CN30report Watch an explanation of how and why carbon neutrality is important to Australia’s red meat industry at: youtube.com/meatandlivestock 22