Wheatbelt Connect | Farm Weekly - video Dailymotion

Wheatbelt Connect will help farmers rejuvenate and rehabilitate salt-affected or otherwise unproductive farmland within a 25-year lease.

Transcript

00:00We're out at Gabalong, which is approximately two and a half hours north of Perth.

00:20We're planting these trees for carbon credits, they're doing a joint venture with the land

00:27owner, planting approximately 150,000 trees over this 230-odd hectares.

00:35The species that we're planting is yorkums or eucalyptus leafer.

00:42By planting trees on land which can't be cropped is ideal, and the land owner can reap some

00:51rewards, whether it be ASCUs or a shared type of agreement.

00:58That's what farmers are looking for.

01:02Les Crane.

01:03I've lived here at Gabalong for 50 years.

01:07I've been coming up to this for over 70 years.

01:11Grew up in Perth for the first 20 years.

01:16It was my father's passion, and we had 780-odd hectares, and that's where it all started

01:23from.

01:24The Crane family moved to Bindi in 1926, and then I moved up here in 1976, at the end of

01:3276, and we've run a mixed farming operation that's mixed cropping sheep and cattle.

01:39Love has a high price.

01:42Agriculture is my passion, and always been interested in leaving ground better than when

01:49we started, and concerned where we're going as a wider community, a worldwide community.

01:59I think climate change has been with us for millennia, but unfortunately the way it's

02:04been changing more recently is probably not in a positive sense for our longevity.

02:12My name's Baron Spencer.

02:13I work for IMPEX.

02:14I work in the New Energy Business Unit.

02:16I'm the environmental scientist.

02:19I was brought in for the Wheatbelt Connect project, which aims to revegetate areas of

02:25the Western Australian Wheatbelt for carbon farming, with the idea of hopefully turning

02:29some of it into biofuels.

02:35And what we're trying to do here is we're trying to integrate farm forestry into marginal

02:41agricultural land.

02:42AMZ, Qantas, and of course IMPEX are overseeing the whole program.

03:06To have those three all working together gives investors, gives landholders trust.

03:14I guess trust is a big thing, because farmers need trust and acknowledgement that this project

03:23is for real.

03:24This is not just a fly-by-night project.

03:26This is for real.