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  • 17 hours ago
Robert Mackenzie, Macka's Angus, Salt Ash, NSW, spoke about how his operation approaches carbon sequestration and integrating AI at 2026 ABARES Outlook. Video by Andrew Marshall and Dakota Tait.
Transcript
00:00The last five years, we've been doing 1,400 soil samples every year.
00:06Every February, we do our whole soil sampling, GPS coordinated,
00:12so we're sampling in the exact same areas.
00:15So in 2025 reporting period, we sequestered over 11,500 tonnes of carbon
00:22for a footprint touching 9,000 tonnes.
00:26We're increasing our carbon sequestration because, you know,
00:30the more country that we're improving, you know, the more carbon that we are sequestering.
00:35So we're very focused on pasture sequestration, which is helping us hold more moisture.
00:41So 1% carbon gain is giving us about 160,000 litres more water per hectare.
00:48This carbon is also helping make our soils healthier.
00:52We're seeing much better weight gains on our wieners
00:56because we're predominantly, you know, a wiener operation where most of our country is.
01:01So a big, big take-up of weight gain throughout our wieners.
01:06And that contributes to improving our pasture but also improving our soil health.
01:13But some key areas that we're focused on is obviously reducing methane through genetics.
01:19So purchasing animals that are really strong maternal lines, very fertile, shorter gestation period, faster weight gain.
01:30But our latest acquisition was a bull out of Scotland.
01:33Rawburn Aberdeen Angus produced an outstanding bull, number one in the world for feed efficiency.
01:39We have to get smarter at feeding animals cheaper.
01:44And that bull now will make a big difference in our whole, you know, paddock-to-plate program.
01:51AI was a whole new era of farming.
01:56It's a whole new era for the world.
01:57So we've adopted AI only in a small way at the moment.
02:01But a big focus is on us is being able to compress large documents
02:06and understand the key ingredients of those documents that can better help us make informed decisions on farm.
02:16We're also focused with more drone usage than ever before.
02:20So currently we're working with drones on farm, but also AI to identify green-on-green certain weeds
02:29that pose a big problem within our region, but also pose a problem in our operation.
02:36So using AI to become better at identifying weeds through drones, through apps,
02:43is helping make us better farmers and better at what we do day to day.
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