Farmers demand seat at management table

Meeting the world's demands for sustainable land management is crucial to ensuring food security and providing our population access to nutritious and abundant food sources. To advance this goal, the Federal Government has proposed significant changes to a new methodology for farm and land management.

In March 2025, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEW) released its 'plain English' version of the new Integrated Farm and Land Management (IFLM) Methodology. Initially envisioned as a comprehensive framework to support whole-farm carbon projects.

Despite ongoing industry advice and an initial focus on supporting a whole-of-farm approach to carbon projects, the IFLM methodology has been stripped back. 

While the original and ambitious vision encompassed a broader integration of various carbon management activities, the current focus reflects a strategic decision to slim down the priority areas. 

This approach remains too narrow and fails to provide farmers with the flexibility to adopt broader sustainability measures under the framework. The refined focus is now specifically on activities related to managed regeneration, plantings of native forests, and improvements to soil sequestration, a shadow of its original ambition. 

Over time the framework suggests the scope could be broadened, the only drawback is it would be a proponent-led development process, and not achieved through government leadership. 

The industry was not consulted on this approach and critically the IFLM right now excludes livestock-related emissions reduction activities, fire management, on-farm energy, and commercial forestry plantations. 

What we need is a serious approach that delivers on the promised whole-of-farm IFLM. The credibility of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme, the clean energy regulator and DCCEEW rest on practical farmer-ready methodologies, not more narrowing and delay. 

For four years, the industry has been left in limbo. This uncertainty continues to erode farmer confidence. One full term of political promises has come and gone. 

We’ve waited four years and still have no clear timeline to meet the sector’s needs. Instead, special interests from environmental and academic groups have philosophically driven the policy-making process, directly contradicting consultation with the agriculture sector.

Once again the bureaucracy and policymakers have sidelined farmers, so why not develop farm-ready methodology that reflects how farmers operate across the entire landscape and incentivise them to adopt multiple approaches? 

A proponent-led approach may suit some niche ideologies but does not represent the practical realities and should not replace the government's role and responsibility to do the right thing, as was originally promised. 

It’s time for the Federal Government to return to its original promise: a practical, whole-of-farm methodology that empowers farmers to lead in sustainable land management. Farmers are ready to act—but they need a clear, inclusive, and science-backed policy that reflects on-the-ground realities, not abstract theory. If Australia is serious about climate action and food security, it must stop sidelining agriculture and start partnering with it.