Louisa Kiely
Director, Carbon Farmers of Australia
Academic Qualifications
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 Advanced Diploma of Farm Management at Sydney University (Orange), trained in Holistic Management, and since 1998 she has been a woolgrower in the Wellington NSW district.
Professional Experience
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 Boezman, Montana. She is co-founder of Carbon Farmers of Australia (CFA) – a trading arm of the Carbon Coalition. 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. 2019 marked the 9th National Carbon Farming Conference & Expo, the biggest yet with delegates from every state in Australia and from all over the world.
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. In 2011, she established the Carbon Farming and Trading Association, in order to be able to represent farmers in the new carbon trading environments.
As director of Carbon Farmers of Australia, 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.