The workshop was held on Tuesday, July 2, and Mr Nicholson said it was a success.
“It was good. I think people got a bit out of it,” he said.
“There were four broad areas that we covered.”
One was around understanding the pressures and where the expectation are going to be growing in the next few years around carbon emissions.
The second one was around how farmers can calculate emissions and understanding the methods and any information you need to do that calculation.
Then they talked about if you’ve done your calculation, what can you do to lower that number?
The event finished by looking to the future and finding out what is coming in the next five to 10 years and what else can be done to reduce emissions.
“I think that some of the practices we can do can actually lower emissions and also improve the productivity of your farm,” Mr Nicholson said.
“It’s important to recognise that and the value that you can potentially get from those practices and simple things like growing more pasture and having that pasture of higher quality, which makes your animals grow faster.”
He mentioned options that may become easier in the future.
“There are benefits from genetic selection,” he said.
“So the animals you choose in the very near future, we’ll be able to choose animals that have lower emissions.”
He also went over data collection and the importance of accurate information.
“The information that you need to do an accurate calculation requires collecting information around things that might sound simple like, the number and class of animals that you’ve got and their weights at various times during the year, but a lot of people don’t weigh their animals regularly,” he said.
“If you’re guessing the number, your emissions can be out.
“We talked about how you’ve got scales there, make sure you turn them on every time the animals go through so you’re collecting weights.”
The Rochester workshop was part of a series run by North Central Catchment Management Authority, which also travelled to St Arnaud and Castlemaine.
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