Mr Carbon Farming

Michael and Louisa Kiely founded Australia’s Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming in February 2006. It is now often abbreviated to the Carbon Coalition. The intention is to lobby for the right of Australian landholders to trade on the emissions offset market the credits that they can earn by sequestering carbon in their soils. Is soil carbon the new cash crop? asks Kiely. He speaks with the zeal of an evangelist and calls himself a ‘carbon farmer’. “Carbon farming is not a new practice. It is a new way to describe a collection of techniques which can increase soil organic carbon in agricultural land ... It’s about changing the way we farm ...” says Kiely. Carbon farming is managing the land to sequester carbon and farming techniques that can meet this end include organic farming, biodynamic farming and natural sequence farming

Trading Carbon into Agriculture: making it happen

With agriculture occupying approximately sixty per cent of Australia’s land surface, policy makers, scientists and land managers are becoming increasingly interested in opportunities to sequester greenhouse emissions through land use change. The announcement of the Labor Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative brings Australian agriculture a step closer to participating in recognised domestic and international climate change mitigation action. In this paper, the costs and opportunities for carbon sequestration options under the Carbon Farming Initiative are assessed. The following section discusses the substantial hidden costs that may be associated with an offset trading scheme and potential for these costs to substantially shrink the size of the market. The paper concludes by presenting some potential solutions to the challenges raised and identifies some critical questions for policy makers.carbon trading, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Climate change mitigation in agriculture: barriers to the adoption of carbon farming policies in the EU

Climate change mitigation in the agricultural sector is essential to keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C within reach. This article explores why there has been a limited adoption of carbon farming policies in the EU, despite the potential for emissions reductions and carbon sequestration at the farm level. Desk research revealed that EU Member States are increasingly setting sectoral climate targets for agriculture, but there is a lack of policies addressing carbon farming. Governments have largely refrained from using laws and regulatory instruments, with strategies and plans representing the large majority of carbon farming policies in the EU. Moreover, interviews with policymakers and other stakeholders revealed that the main barriers to the adoption of carbon farming policies are concerns over carbon leakage and competitive advantage, the need for a just transition, and structural issues in the food value chain. Despite being regarded by researchers as a main barrier to carbon farming, the agricultural lobby is not perceived as a barrier by policymakers, who emphasise the importance of involving farmers in the policy process. A key implication of these findings is that carbon farming policies need to form part of a wider food system transformation in order to successfully contribute to climate change mitigation

Community perceptions of carbon farming: A case study of the semi-arid Mulga Lands in Queensland, Australia

International efforts to combat climate change are reflected in diverse national and subnational policies, the effects of which can stimulate fundamental changes in land use at the regional scale. Since 2012, the Australian Government has provided incentives for landholders to implement “carbon farming” through methods that either sequester or avoid the release of carbon emissions in vegetation and soils. While the factors leading to individual landholder adoption of carbon farming is widely researched, there is comparatively limited analysis of broader community perceptions and potential impacts of its resulting changes in land use and management. This research uses semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis to explore community perceptions of carbon farming in the vast and remote Mulga Lands of Queensland, Australia, a region that supports nearly 200 carbon projects across 7 million hectares. We found that individual landholders were motivated to adopt carbon farming primarily for the economic benefits, despite sharing concerns with the broader community over potential environmental and social impacts. Long-standing local attitudes, values and beliefs around perceived desirable natural landscapes, and their role in maintaining agricultural production, underpin a view that non-active land management and absentee land ownership – considered by some in the community to be a consequence of carbon farming – would contribute to ongoing rural decline. Our findings show that the scale and pace of land use changes facilitated by carbon farming have led to a community impact in the Mulga Lands. Such impacts must be explicitly considered in future research, policy and planning to ensure land use transitions stimulated by carbon farming policy are effectively and fairly managed

Motivations and barriers for Western Australian broad-acre farmers to adopt carbon farming

Available online 28 April 2017Carbon farming policies aim to contribute to climate change mitigation, but their success strongly depends on whether landholders actually adopt desired practices or participate in offered programs. The Australian Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative and Emissions Reduction Fund policies were designed to incentivise the adoption of carbon farming practices. Although these policies have been active since December 2011, farmer engagement has been limited, and net emissions reductions low as a result. We surveyed broad-acre farmers in the Western Australian wheatbelt to explore their drivers and barriers to adopting carbon farming practices and participating in carbon farming policy programs. Drivers of adoption included knowledge and perception of co-benefits (for yield, productivity, and the environment), knowing another adopter, and believing that changes to farm management are an appropriate method to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Barriers to adoption included lack of information, uncertainty and costs. The key barrier to participation was policy and political uncertainty. The determinants of adoption and participation that we identify in our study offer important insights into how to best ensure the success of Australia’s land sector-based climate change policies. We conclude that, to increase landholder engagement, the co-benefits and climate change benefits of carbon farming practices must be actively promoted, and additional information is needed about the costs associated with adoption. Information diffusion is best achieved if it actively leverages landholder social networks. Finally, our results indicate that landholder buy-in to carbon farming could be greatly enhanced by achieving more continuity in Australian climate change policies and politics.Marit E. Kragt, Nikki P. Dumbrell, Louise Blackmor

Carbon farming in relation to Western Australian agriculture

Carbon farming activities need to return multiple economic and environmental co-benefits to be attractive to land managers. This bulletin summarises concepts underlying carbon farming, how Australia accounts for greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for Western Australian land managers to participate in, and benefit from, carbon farming.https://researchlibrary.agric.wa.gov.au/bulletins/1269/thumbnail.jp

Salinity risk mapping for assessing Carbon Farming Initiative proposals: decision support and data requirements

The Clean Energy Legislation passed by the Australian Parliament on 8 November 2011 links the carbon price to the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI). Under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 (the Act), proponents need to consider regional natural resource management (NRM) plans to ensure that tree plantings for carbon bio-sequestration maximise environmental benefits and avoid unintended adverse effects on biodiversity, water and agricultural production systems

Carbon Farming Initiative review

SUMMARY The Authority is required by legislation to review the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) every three years; this is its first review. The review has benefited from consultations with stakeholders from a range of sectors and the Authority thanks those who contributed. When introduced in 2011, the CFI was designed to complement the carbon pricing mechanism. Accordingly, it focused on sectors not covered by the carbon price, namely: agriculture, waste (in part), and land use, land use change and forestry. CFI projects earned credits that could be sold to entities with liabilities under the carbon pricing mechanism. The carbon price has since been repealed, and the CFI has been expanded to form the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) and now covers all sectors of the economy. The ERF is the central plank of the government’s Direct Action Plan to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. It has been introduced through amendments to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 (Cth), which brings it within the scope of this review. For simplicity’s sake, this report refers to the CFI as the scheme as originally configured, and the ERF as the scheme as approved by the parliament in November 2014. Under the ERF, the government will purchase emissions reductions through auctions (and possibly other means). Fixed-price contracts, typically for seven years, will be offered to those who are successful at auction. Other changes to streamline the scheme are also being introduced, and a safeguard mechanism (that will discourage large emitters from increasing their emissions above historical levels) is to commence in July 2016. While these changes are substantial, the ERF retains an essential characteristic of the CFI in that it credits projects for reducing emissions below a defined baseline, and the baseline reflects what would have been expected to occur in the absence of the scheme. The changes to the CFI are important for this review in two ways. First, as the scheme is being expanded to become the central element of Australia’s policy to reduce emissions and meet its targets, the lessons to be gleaned from its operation to date will be of interest in assessing the likely performance of the ERF. Second, as this review follows closely on the policy development process for the ERF, care has been taken not to duplicate that process, but to focus instead on the extent to which the design of the ERF addresses problems identified with the CFI, as well as other challenges that may arise

The legal framework for Australia's Carbon Pricing Mechanism: a critique

As part of the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Plan, the Government has attempted to harness the legal innovation of the tradeable emissions unit, within a capped carbon trading system, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such an approach promises to send a price signal to the market which will influence emitting behaviours and reduce our emissions in a cost-effective manner. However, if the carbon trading scheme is to successfully achieve cost-effective emissions reductions then the carbon market must be supported by an appropriate legal framework. This paper will consider the key features of the Australian Carbon Pricing Mechanism, including the Carbon Farming Initiative, and critique whether it has all the hallmarks of an effective legal framework to reduce Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions. The likely future of the trading scheme, following the 2013 elections, will also be addressed