Funding available for native tree plantings on Victorian farms

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If you ask Alice Armistead about the benefits of the five year old environmental plantings on her farm, you'll find she's quick to reel off a range of positives. Now, funding from sources such as the Victorian Carbon Farming Program are enabling more farmers like Alice to undertake native plantings to suit their farm plans.

In the past five years, more than 12,000 native trees and shrubs have been planted on Alice Armistead's cattle farm in regional Victoria, in partnership with Greening Australia.

The trees were planted on and around what Ms Armistead described as unproductive and weed-infested earth walls that separated the property's paddocks.

Since then, Ms Armistead says that the paddocks are now better protected and are producing more grass for cutting hay and grazing.

"It [the planting] doesn't take away grazing areas, in fact it produces more grass for your property because of the protection that it offers," she said.

When carefully integrated into farm plans, native plantings increase shelter for crops and livestock with flow on productivity benefits. They can also decrease water loss (evapotranspiration) and improve soil health.

"We wanted to make use of our barriers, which generally dry out pretty quickly and don't grow a lot of pasture, so in terms of grazing cattle they were really quite useless," Ms Armistead said.

"Our planting objectives were to protect our pasture and also our cattle and calves, but at the same time provide an environment for other native species to thrive."

Access to funding

Funding for native plantings can come from various sources including government programs and corporate and philanthropic investment, or a combination of these may be funnelled to landholders through organisations like Greening Australia.

The Victorian Carbon Farming Program (VCFP) by the Victorian Government provides a new avenue for landholders in North Central Victoria to access funding and support to plant native trees on their property.

The program is being run as a $3 million pilot until late 2024, after which broader rollout to other areas of the state is anticipated.

Environmental plantings funded under the program cannot be broad (paddock) scale projects - instead the program is designed to fund integrated planting types such as shelterbelts and riparian buffers.

Trees planted through the program have the potential to create a range of on-farm benefits including stock shelter, improved biodiversity outcomes and enhanced property aesthetics.

They may also be used to generate new income streams via carbon and environmental markets, and offset on-property emissions.

A helping hand from Greening Australia

Greening Australia offers end-to-end restoration solutions for landholders across Australia, from access to funding and support in the planning and design phase, all the way through to planting, monitoring and reporting.

Through its wholly owned subsidiary company Canopy, Greening Australia can also help landholders register their environmental planting project to generate best-in-class Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).

For Ms Armistead, it was Greening Australia's values that first drew her to the environmental not-for-profit.

"We decided to work alongside Greening Australia because we like their philosophy. They support farmers' interests and way of life," Ms Armistead said.

"They're not about coming in and saying there's no grazing - it's about working alongside each other, and that was really appealing to us."

For more than 40 years, Greening Australia has worked with over 30,000 landholders across Australia to create a tangible difference for people and nature.

Now as a registered VCFP project advisor, Greening Australia is looking to support interested landholders in North Central Victoria to access the program funding and can also help landholders across Victoria and nationally to access other types of project funding.

Any landholder interested in more information or a no-obligation chat about restoration on their property can visit the Greening Australia website.

For North Central Victorian landholders interested in learning more about the VCFP, Greening Australia is also running a free community information session at Inglewood on 1 May, 2024.

Attendees will have an opportunity to learn more about Greening Australia and the VCFP, hear from restoration and carbon market experts about what is possible, and ask questions.

More information about the event and how to register can be found at here.

This is branded content for Greening Australia