A farmer in Warrenbayne says carbon neutral farming is possible if producers put dedication and a considerable amount of effort into planting trees on their properties.
Russell Washusen has lived in the locality since the 70s and this past weekend hosted a field day there and at his local community hall for many local and out of town farmers.
Everyone visiting had been looking for ways to diversify farming methods to better the environment, with eager questions from the audience throughout the day.
For Dr Washusen, his presentation as part of the field day focused on his own property, which had seen better days.
"When we bought [our property] Glenisla, it was it was fairly devoid of trees," Dr Washusun said.
"It was pretty tired after 100 years of grazing, and we battled through the 70s, and we then hit the 1982 drought.
"We've got about five kilometres of creeks which run through the property, the main one being Robinson Creek, and that had been eroding fairly badly for decades before we got the property, and after the '82 drought broke, and we got back to a normal type of rainfall."
Dr Washusen said the drought had taken so much vegetation out of the creek itself that it started eroding even worse when it began to rain and consulted with soil conservation specialists about what they could do, but it came with much expense.
"Most of it was all engineering work, and it was too expensive for us," Dr Washusen said.
But decades of hard work and experimentation led to some positive outcomes for his farm, which currently runs cattle.
Dr Washusen fenced in the creek, started planting trees, and then diversified even more after the wool market crashed in the 90s.
Around about the same time, Dr Washusen also decided to head back to university.
"I got a PhD and became a research scientist at the CSIRO, running a research unit, researching farm trees," he said.
"I had been employed as an applied wood scientist and looked at wood processing from farm-grown trees economically.
"That was mostly with eucalypt, sometimes with pine trees and blue gum as well," he said
A national farm forestry program also encouraged him to expand further into a range of tree species on his property, leading to his carbon neutral cattle farm.
After retiring from the CSIRO in 2009, Dr Washusen began full-time farming since then and, with the help of the University of Melbourne, has been developing tools for carbon accounting.
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He said that if farmers look toward a long term vision, being carbon neutral can lead to an ideal way to harvest.
"More tree planting [is] required throughout the years " he said.
"You should keep the wood growing fast to sequester the carbon [and] to stay carbon neutral, and you need to harvest a percentage of what you've got on the farm and replant all the time.
"That way, it becomes a permanent way of agriculture."
Dr Washusen, the field day, demonstrated that having a science background was not the be-all for those wanting to get into forestry farming and reduce their carbon footprint
"It's just a matter of education," he said.
"I was looking at experimenting, finding the ways to get to carbon neutrality, and all you need to do is a little bit of training.
"There are programs that once upon a time were around that can teach people how to do the farm plans, plant the trees and get to where we are, and there are still ways farmers can learn about this."
Dr Washusen said farmers in different areas would have different approaches, depending on many factors.
But he said there were many great approaches to running livestock with trees, and farmers needed to take an individualistic approach, depending on several factors.
"We had those special waterway issues to deal with, but other farms will have issues like the Murray Darling Basin where there possibly some salinity in the soil," he said.
"For us having many trees has been beneficial.
"There is a shelter function there with our cattle calving in the trees, and a lot of the plantations are open, so cattle can also go in and out when they like.
"They go in when it's hot to seek out shade, and when it's frosty, they're in there too.
"When it's raining, they're near the trees, and that's only when the conditions are really good that they're out on the pasture."
