Cattle farmers plant trees for sustainable aviation fuel

North Qld cattle farmers take on renewable fuel trial planting pongamia trees Sun 19 Jul 2026 at 5:29am In short: North Queensland graziers are trialling a 10-hectare pongamia plantation to run alongside livestock. Pongamia trees produce oil that can be turned into sustainable aviation fuel. The seed husks from pongamia can be ground up and used as a high-protein cattle feed. A north Queensland cattle farming family is taking part in a trial growing oil-producing trees alongside livestock. The Lawrie family, from Powlathanga station near Charters Towers in north Queensland, has been running a cattle breeding operation since 2004. But now the family is taking part in a new venture. In September last year, they turned a 10-hectare paddock into a renewable fuel trial, planting the oil-producing pongamia trees. The trial is being completed with SilvoPlus, an entity of renewable fuel company JetZero Australia. They're trying to determine the best way to run livestock alongside rows of pongamia, a legume tree with seeds containing oil that can be processed into biofuel. Powlathanga grazier, Stephen Lawrie, said they wanted to take part in the trial to look at diversifying their income. "You're always looking at different options, if something else interesting comes up that can work in conjunction with the cattle, I'm definitely interested in it," he said. Ketti Ketmontri, the project lead for SilvoPlus, said the main purpose was to test the trees with grazing. "We're looking at optimised grazing, how to produce fodder or cash crops in the interrow, and then when's the right time to bring sheep or cattle in," Mr Ketmontri said. Trials across the country, nowhere to process Pongamia trials have been breaking ground across Australia over the past decade, but there is currently nowhere that processes the oil into biofuel. Ed Mason, CEO of JetZero Australia, has plans to build a biorefinery in Townsville that would take agricultural products and process them into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). "We're looking to take bioethanol and take about a hundred million litres of sustainable aviation fuel as well as renewable diesel," he said. "That's a material volume for Townsville, enough to supply most of the airports in the region if we were to do that." Demand for SAF is growing, with 38 countries now having a mandate for airlines to use it. JetZero has completed road construction and land clearing at a 150ha site in Townsville, with the company expected to reach financial close at the end of this year. "It would be two years of construction and we're trying to accelerate that and compress that as much as we can with our engineering contractors," said Mr Mason. "First fuels will hopefully be coming by 2028." A potential cattle feed source Scientists are looking at the nutritional value of the outside shell of pongamia seeds to be used as cattle feed. Associate Professor from the University of Queensland Sarah Meale has just finished a study feeding ground-up pongamia husk to cattle. "The pongamia husks are the byproduct of that oil extraction. So, it's a very cheap feed source that is really quite high in protein. So up to around 20 to 30 per cent protein." The trial included a zero, two and four per cent inclusion rate of the ground pongamia. "Across all treatments, we have seen the exact same intake and the same growth rates, which is a really promising outcome." "Right now, we know cottonseed is hard to find and very, very expensive along with other protein sources. This is the potential to replace those at a much lower cost." Although the experiment had promising results, the lack of pongamia oil processing is a roadblock for the feed to be used more widespread. "The scale at the moment is the problem. We don't have enough of the product to make it into the market." Cattle to be priority On Powlathanga, Stephen Lawrie remains interested in the future of pongamia, but wants cattle to remain the focus. "Unless the trees could produce twice the amount of income as what the cattle could, we couldn't really consider it," he said. "But if they can be run in conjunction, I think it's a win-win."