Nicholson Carbon Project

Nicholson Carbon Project is a soil organic carbon project located at Garema, approximately 37km south of Forbes in central NSW. It was registered in December 2023 and originally covered 954.73ha, though a variation to the project in March 2025 resulted in some of the listed areas being removed.

Soil carbon projects involve adopting new or materially different agricultural management practices to increase the amount of carbon stored in the soil. Under the Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration using Measurement and Models (2021) methodology, carbon storage is verified using a measurement-only approach that relies on direct soil sampling and laboratory analysis.

The Garema and Forbes region is heavily utilised for broadacre cropping and mixed grazing agricultural operations. The area experiences a moderate climate typical of the Central West Slopes and Plains, and the local environment is predominantly defined by red-brown earths (Chromosols) and heavy clay loams.

This project operates on a 4,000-hectare family farm owned by the Nicholsons. To increase carbon in their agricultural system, the proponents apply synthetic and non-synthetic fertilisers to address material soil deficiencies. Notably, the project made history by integrating Loam Bio's CarbonBuilder, an innovative fungal seed treatment, making it the first broadacre cropping operation in NSW to successfully generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) using this specific carbon-sequestering technology. Across 881ha of the active project area, this integration recently led to a successful issuance of 4,867 ACCUs.