Coalition carbon policy: What's in it for farmers?
A prominent agricultural scientist says farmers are unlikely to earn much money under the Coalition's Direct Action plan, which relies heavily on soil carbon sequestration.
The plan would mean that landholders and companies would be paid for reducing CO2 emissions, rather than taxed for polluting the atmosphere with them.
The incoming government would spend $3 billion buying carbon credits from companies and landholders at the lowest possible price through a reverse auction system.
Professor Snow Barlow, from the University of Melbourne, says farmers would struggle to compete against larger companies such as power stations and aluminium smelters.
"I'm hopeful that there might be discussions with the minister regarding how there may be quarantining of carbon credits for the land-based sector," he said.
"Clearly they have other benefits as well as green house mitigation, such as biodiversity and sustainability and indeed better use of the water that falls on the soil."
"As I understand it, they want to use the Carbon Farming Initiative, which means the farmer would have to put forward a methodology and a project proposal to the carbon farming of how they were going to sequester the carbon and (how) they were going to verify they had sequestered the carbon as part of that bid process," Professor Barlow said.
The Coalition wants to reduce Australia's carbon dioxide emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.
It has also has stated that it would support 85 million tonnes of CO2 abatement through soil carbons by that time.
Professor Barlow says the amount of soil carbon that could possibly be sequestered would be closer to five million tonnes.
"The 85 is soil carbon and forestry. Forestry will make a contribution which we think will be larger.
"But under the current Carbon Farming Initiative, soil carbon is quite variable across any paddock out there and to measure what are relatively small increases over time under our current technology, we need a very intensive sampling program.
"So for farmers to engage in that sort of program with the methodology, the costs may well outweigh the benefits if, for instance, we end up with a mitigation price of, say, $5 to $8."
The coalition's plan is appealing to biological farmers such as Martin Royds, who first became interested in soil carbon in his boarding school's vegie patch.
"I pulled the weeds off and I found that the soil underneath was actually yellow sand and I actually started making liquid compost and I grew corn and strawberries, and things like that."
These days he's carbon farming on a much bigger scale at his property at Braidwood, on the southern Tablelands of New South Wales.
"We trample one third into the ground, we leave one third to regrow and the stock eat one third.
"They then excrete out the end a healthy product that lands on the soil and very quickly gets taken up by the dung beetles and worms and whatever and starts feeding the soil again."
His holistic approach, as well as biodynamics, have increased the soil carbon on Martin Royds's farm and that's helped halve the fertiliser bill and increase beef production.
He likes the fact that the Coalition's Direct Action plan relies heavily on the replenishment of soil carbons to reduce Australia's CO2 emissions.
"That's the area where people like myself can make a huge difference.
"It's a great way of getting multiple benefits."
Mr Royds is optimistic about the direct action plan but he's concerned that the policy lacks detail when it comes to dollars.
"You know, I used to be a chemical farmer and it can take a couple of years to transition across to biological farming as I am doing, or building soil carbon, but eventually there's huge benefits.
"I'm turning off stock when everybody else is not, because I've got green grass in the middle of a dry period.
"My grasses start growing earlier because they grow more into the autumn period and I grow more of it.
"It's a win-win."
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