Carbon Farmers of Australia deals only with trading programs that are structured to benefit the interests of the grower. After fighting for 10 years to win the right for growers to trade farm offsets, CFA has a track record of support for farmers.

Here are some hints for how to tell if a program is farmer-friendly:

For more information on our commitment to ethical carbon trading, please contact us.

Louisa obtained her Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from the University of New England. She worked in the market research industry as a field supervisor while bringing up her 3 children. Together with her husband Michael, in 1991-2003 Louisa established and grew a city based marketing agency from zero to 55 employees. In this business, she was Director and General Manager of Boomerang! Integrated Marketing & Advertising.

Intent on following her first choice of career, she studied for the Advance Diploma of Farm Management at Sydney University (Orange), trained in Holistic Management, and between 1998 and 2018 was a woolgrower in the Wellington NSW district.

She was selected by the Central Western NSW Catchment Management Authority as one of 10 highly innovative landholders in the catchment to be trained in farm planning and soil restoration. Through this training, she and her husband Michael became convinced that soil carbon could solve many agricultural, environmental, and climate change problems.

She co-founded the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming in February 2006, to lobby for the right of Australian landholders to trade on the emissions offset market the credits they can earn by sequestering carbon in their soils. They have since traveled throughout Australia and the world meeting scientists and farmers and spreading the word about Carbon Farming.

She was invited to be a delegate at a Climate Change and Conservation Farming Conference in LaFayette, Indiana, organised by the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation. She was also a delegate at the National Carbon Offset Coalition Conference in Bozeman, Montana. She is co-founder of Carbon Farmers of Australia Pty Ltd (CFA). CFA also published the world’s first Carbon Farming Handbook.

Seeking to build bridges with the scientific community, she organised two Soil C Summits between Scientists and Farmers, in Dubbo and Orange NSW. And as co-founder of CFA, she organised and ran the world’s first Carbon Farming Conference & Expo in November 2007. In 2022 the tenth National Carbon Farming Conference & Expo – the biggest yet – with delegates from every state in Australia and from all over the world, was held.

She developed the “CarbonCredited™” brand for wool and recruited woolgrowers into this emissions reduction program. Louisa has been recognized for her work and was chosen as runner up in the 2008 NSW Rural Woman of the Year. She has also sat on the board of the Regional Development Australia Committee – Orana Region. This intergovernmental committee was set up to ensure the future strength and development in rural and regional Australia.

As director of Carbon Farmers of Australia Pty Ltd, she was a part of a consortium of 3 companies that developed the first Soil Carbon Methodology submitted to the Carbon Farming Initiative process. Carbon Farmers of Australia also offers farm-ready training in Carbon Farming and Trading.

Michael Kiely founded Carbon Farmers of Australia with his wife Louisa in 2009. He also wrote and published the first Carbon Farming Handbook and helped secure millions in research funds for soil carbon.

Having moved to the country, and realised the huge challenges agriculture faces, he set about using his skills to research all issues concerning farmers and climate change.

In this role Michael & Louisa were woolgrowers from the Wellington district of NSW and Conveners of the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming, a farmers’ and citizens’ movement which aims to have soil carbon recognised as a major solution to Climate Change. They have been delegates at many high-level symposia in Australia and the USA. They led a fact-finding delegation to the USA on behalf of Australian farmers in 2006. While there, they negotiated the first order for soil carbon credits from the Chicago Climate Exchange. Michael has appeared as an expert witness before the NSW Premier’s Greenhouse Advisory Panel and the NSW Department of Primary Industries Climate Risk Management Project.

Michael and Louisa have organized and conducted the World’s first Carbon Farming Conference & Expo in 2007, attracting more than 350 delegates from all states of Australia, and across the world.