16 November 2026. By Mark Pawsey, CEO, AgCarE.
Queensland producers know their land better than anyone. But with regulators and markets increasingly using satellite imagery and public environmental data to assess land management and compliance, there’s another important question: what does the data say about your property?
Publicly available vegetation mapping, satellite imagery and other spatial datasets provide valuable information about agricultural land. But they do not always provide the detail or context needed to understand what is actually happening at individual property level.
That matters when producers are considering management decisions potentially affected by environmental requirements such as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, or exploring carbon, biodiversity and environmental offset opportunities.
Knowing you are doing the right thing on the ground is important. Increasingly, producers also need to understand the information that regulators, markets and other external parties may be seeing about their land.
Putting your property into the picture
Producers can access many public datasets themselves, but finding the right information, bringing it together and interpreting what it means at property scale can take significant time.
This is the gap NatureLedger, developed by AgCarE, has been designed to address.
NatureLedger brings environmental and spatial information together into a property-specific report, helping producers better understand their natural assets, identify potential compliance requirements and explore opportunities such as biodiversity offsets and other environmental markets.
This includes 15-year vegetation mapping, 50-metre waterway buffer mapping for Great Barrier Reef catchments, information relevant to EPBC requirements and government data brought together at property scale.
Most importantly, it gives producers the opportunity to compare what public data says about their property with what they know is happening on the ground.
There may also be financial benefits. Eligible WFI Rural Plan customers who obtain a NatureLedger report can access a 10 per cent premium discount for up to three years, subject to eligibility requirements and terms and conditions outlined below.
Knowledge to make better decisions
NatureLedger is also being used by some consultants as a consistent information base to support their advice to producers. While the report does not provide professional advice or approval to undertake particular activities, it can help identify matters that warrant further investigation or specialist guidance.
Fourth-generation cattle producer and 2025 AgForce Queensland Producer of the Year Bim Struss manages Havelock and Yellow Cap near Mitchell with his wife Susan.
For Bim, having property information together in one place helps inform decisions about both risks and opportunities.
“What Mark and Noel have put together brings valuable information about our land into one place. It helps us better understand what we have, assess opportunities for development and identify matters that may need further investigation or advice before we proceed.
“At $1,800, I consider it money very well spent.”
Bim Struss
The message for producers is simple: know what the data says about your property.
Public data may not tell the whole story, but understanding it can put producers in a stronger position to identify potential issues, seek advice where needed and make informed decisions about their land.
NatureLedger brings that information together, complementing producers’ knowledge of their country with a clearer picture of the data available to government, regulators and markets.
