The North Australian Pastoral Company's (NAPCo) Beef Cattle Herd Management Project

The North Australian Pastoral Company's (NAPCo) Beef Cattle Herd Management Project is a large-scale agricultural emissions avoidance project operating across NAPCo’s extensive cattle station portfolio in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Registered in March 2022, the project aggregates herd management activities across the company’s 6.1 million hectare estate, which encompasses the Barkly Tableland and the Channel Country. While no single set of coordinates defines the project due to its roving nature, the operations are centrally managed from Brisbane, with major regional hubs including Mount Isa and Cloncurry serving as key reference points for their station network.

The project utilizes the Beef Cattle Herd Management methodology, which focuses on reducing the emissions intensity of beef production. Rather than sequestering carbon in soil or trees, this method rewards producers for improving herd efficiency, specifically by reducing the amount of methane produced per kilogram of liveweight. NAPCo achieves this by implementing strategies such as improving genetics, reducing the average age of the herd (turning cattle off earlier), and removing unproductive animals to ensure resources are consumed only by growing stock.

The environmental setting for this project is the vast, semi-arid rangelands of Northern Australia. The region is characterized by "boom and bust" rainfall patterns and relies heavily on the flooding of the Channel Country river systems. The soils are predominantly fertile cracking clays (vertosols) and Mitchell grass downs, which support the native pasture grazing system essential to NAPCo’s low-input production model.

A notable feature of this project is its integration into NAPCo's "Five Founders" beef brand, which became Australia's first certified carbon-neutral beef product. The company employs a "whole-of-life" approach, combining this herd management project with other initiatives like solar power conversion and trials of methane-reducing feed additives (such as Bovaer) to lower their carbon footprint before offsetting the remainder.