Tornados, wildfires, droughts and floods were once seen as freak conditions. But the environmental disasters now striking the world are signs of 'global weirding' says a UK Guardian article covering the climate anomalies occurring around the world.

Three major independent datasets show 2010 as one of the two warmest years since official record-keeping began in the late 19th century, according to the latest NOAA State of the climate report. Annual average temperatures in the Arctic continued to rise at about twice the rate of the lower latitudes. Arctic sea ice shrank to the third smallest area on record, and the Greenland ice sheet melted at the highest rate since at least 1958. Meanwhile, average sea ice extent in the Antarctic grew to an all-time record maximum in 2010. Average global sea surface temperature was third warmest on record and sea level continued to rise. Carbon dioxide increased by 2.60 ppm, more than the average annual increase seen from 1980-2010.

This analysis of the Carbon Tax funding for farmers is brought to you by the Carbon Farming & Trading Association.

We told Minister Combet last February that the Soil Carbon Research Program would provide only 20% of the data needed to make trade in soil carbon offsets possible, he seemed surprised. When we asked him was there any more money to finish the job, he said “No!” Something happened between then and last Sunday when the Carbon Tax detail was released. Blame it on the Independents and Greens.

The headline: $1.5 billion for landholders to switch to more climate friendly activities on farm.
In summary, this is how the $1.5 billion is divided up:

• $201 million for research into “new ways of storing carbon and reducing pollution in the land sectors.”
• $20 million to “convert research into practical methodologies which are recognised under the Carbon Farming Initiative
• $99 million “for landholders to take action on the ground, including testing new ways to increase soil carbon and reduce pollution.”
• $250 million for the Carbon Farming Initiative non Kyoto Carbon Fund will be used by the Government to purchase carbon credits that will create “incentives to undertake land-based action such as the storing of soil carbon, revegetation and forest conservation.”
• $946 million from the Biodiversity Fund “for landholders to undertake projects that establish, restore, protect or manage biodiverse carbon stores.”
• $44 million will provide "a refundable tax offset to encourage the uptake of conservation tillage farming techniques and participation in soil carbon sequestration research”.

A total of $1.5 billion for land sector activities. Stupendous. Let’s look a little more closely at the numbers. First, divide it all by 6 to get the annual figure as all amounts are to cover 6 years (except the conservation tillage 15% tax offset – it is for 3 years).

The $201 million for research amounts to $33 million per year. By comparison, the Soil Carbon Research Program (SCRP) had a total of $25.5 million over three years. But this new funding is not solely for soil carbon. It has to be shared between projects “to improve soil carbon, reduce pollution from livestock and crops, and enhance sustainable agricultural practices. Novel approaches, including biochar, biofuels and new crop and grazing species, will be targeted”. If the SCRP achieved 20% of it’s task with $25.5 million, it would need an additional $100 million to complete it. (The Commonwealth contributed $8 million to the initial SCRP budget, the balance coming from partners such as GRDC. The Commonwealth contribution would therefore be $32 million.) Will soil carbon get the funds? Not without a fight. Is it the research we want?? Good question. Populating models with “monopractice” data* on the grounds that it will help guide farmers’ decisions about whether to 'invest' in soil carbon activities does not translate into a trading regime. However it could be the basis for a scientifically-respectable CCX-style estimation system; ie. assigning a fixed rate of sequestration to a certain practice in a certain climate zone. The resulting data is the best a scientist can do, not the best a farmer can do. Carbon farmers are “poly-practitioners”; ie. they apply a suite of soil management practices to enrich their soil. Simply adding the results for the separate practices together does not add up, because the mechanism is ecological; the dynamic is geometrical, not arithmetic . Ie., it grows by multiplication, not addition.

$20 million will be available to convert research into practical methodologies which are recognised under the Carbon Farming Initiative. This will speed up the development of methodologies because right now there is no incentive to produce meths other than good citizenship.

$99 million will be provided “for landholders to take action on the ground, including testing new ways to increase soil carbon and reduce pollution.” This could mean there is money for farmers to hire scientists and do the research that is being neglected. ie, demonstrating true potential for sequestration.

The $250 million to be spent buying voluntary market offsets (Non-Kyoto) for “ the storing of soil carbon, revegetation and forest conservation” implies that a soil carbon methodology is passed by the Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee (DOIC). Yet the document says soil carbon will emerge ‘over time’, which betrays a belief that only science can provide a solution. (A reference to ‘engaging more scientists and independent experts’ to do research could indicate that the Government is willing to broaden the skillsets and perspectives applied to the wicked problem of soil carbon.)

It may look like a straight copy of Abbott’s Direct Action plan, but it is only a faint echo. The $40 million per year the Government intends to spend can purchase 4 million units at $10 (although the Government has not indicated a price). The Opposition’s Direct Action soil carbon solution, whereby the Government is the only buyer and farmers compete to offer the lowest price, expects to purchase 10 million units in 2012-3, rising to 85 million units per year in 2020. This “market mechanism” does not fit the Association’s idea of an ideal system because it operates to restrict returns to farmers and reduce the contribution that the soil carbon solution can make to addressing climate change and landscape restoration, both of which rely on widespread change of land management practice.

There is another likely farmer response depressant: the intrusion of Government bureaucracy into the marketplace. Seeking to use a market to attract conservative farmers who would run a mile from anything that looked like government environmental program, the Association was shocked to read the following: “Natural resource management organisations will develop plans in each region to guide where carbon farming projects should be located in the landscape. These can be used by landholders to identify and develop activities to reduce carbon pollution.” This creates another level of decision-making to slow down the process and add costs.

The Big ticket item was the billion dollars for ‘BIODIVERSITY”. The Biodiversity Fund will support:

• reforestation and revegetation in areas of high conservation value including wildlife corridors, rivers, streams and wetlands
• management and protection of biodiverse ecosystems, including publicly owned native forests and land under conservation covenants or subject to land clearing restrictions
• action to prevent the spread of invasive species across connected landscapes.

Trees and native vegetation can make a major contribution to landscape resilience and farm production, but this is a very narrow definition of Biodiversity. In farmland, Biodiversity can be found in the species density in pasture grasses, in the species density in soil microbial communities, in grassy woodlands, and in the edge effect of ribbon planting of crops. Biodiversity naturally increases with soil carbon. The two are interdependent. We will need to broaden this definition to gain funds for on farm biodiversity projects. The amount to be spent from the Biodiversity funds on mainly reforestation or forestation is gobsmacking when considered alongside the budget for soil carbon. The Government says the money is to be used “for landholders to undertake projects”, but there is a danger that the lion’s share of it will find its way into salaries with precious little left over for farmer incentives. The “extension/education/encouragement” model is very effective at changing behaviour in those open to the message. But this Conversion Model can be slow-acting and even ineffective with the conservative majority – failing to gain even consideration from minds made up after a lifetime immersed in a culture of traditional ways. The prospect of additional income from growing a new commodity in parallel with their existing enterprises is proven to gain attention long enough for consideration of the proposition. In doing so, this commercial return incentive would work faster because it offers the means to balance risk of experimenting with new business practices. The market model would add potency to the extension model, providing the agencies with access to groups of farmers formerly unavailable to them.

Given the amounts of money on offer and the broad terms of reference, there is likely to be a feeding frenzy by stakeholders who traditionally work in this space and who naturally feel entitled, and newcomers like ourselves (though 6 years is a lifetime in carbon issues) who are pursuing a paradigm shift and need resources to prove our contention. Soil Carbon will have to compete vigorously to not only get a fair share of the resources that we helped to make available, but also to avoid losing control of our destiny by having the agenda fall into unsympathetic hands.

There is a lot of hard work to be done and someone has got to do it – all day every day. This is the reason we formed the Carbon Farming & Trading Association. To give you the opportunity to play an active part in the effort, to build the resource base we need to field a team – because if we don’t turn up, you can be sure the others will, and 85% of success is simply in turning up.

* The Potential of Australian Farmers to Earn Income from Soil Carbon Sequestration has been estimated at unrealisticially low levels. The peer-reviewed science fails to replicate what farmers can achieve because it studies only monopractice (single practice change), it does not study polypractice (multiple practice changes) which is the real-world behaviour of farmers seeking to enrich their soils and increase their soil carbon levels.

The highest level of increase recorded by scientists studying monopractices is 0.5 tonnes of carbon. Experienced carbon farmers using multiple land management changes have recorded 30 tonnes and more per year for 10 years.
These tonnages are not recognised by government scientists because they have not studied it and have no plans to study it. Officially they don't exist. The studies, when they take place, can take up to 5 years. Years can pass before funding is available, then three year field trials, followed by a year getting the results published in an academic journal before it can be considered 'sound science'.
The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists have declared that there is no peer-reviewed science that reveals the potential of carbon farming for soil carbon sequestration. They are right. Public policy has not been informed by knowledge of the existence of the Hidden Tonnes of Soil Carbon.

THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT has announced that it will have a national emissions trading scheme at the same time as Australia, reports Reuters. China will pilot six emissions trading schemes by 2013, and set up a national trading platform by 2015, according to Xie Zhenhua, vice-minister of China's economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday that, like Australia, China will pilot a carbon trading scheme and gradually build a market for emissions trading to meet pollution goals and fight climate change. To get started, Beijing will force power-intensive industries to pay higher electricity tariffs than other industries. Beijing will also encourage energy conservation by improving laws, regulation and taxation policies and asking financial groups to fund low-carbon emission projects. The Government will also discourage 'excessive growth' in power-intensive sectors. Reuters says companies and governments around the world are turning to emissions trading as a way to combat climate change and join a world carbon market worth $142 billion last year.

The Opposition Direct Action plan promises to achieve ‘lowest cost’ abatement by inviting farmers to tender their best price for soil carbon offsets in a market with only one buyer – the Government. Australian farmers won’t line up to sell a government soil carbon at bargain basement prices. The plan would pit farmer against farmer in a race to the bottom to see who could cut their throats the fastest. Farmers are gunshy after a protracted scare campaign about soil carbon sequestration convinced many that trading soil carbon is dangerous. And, as with any market, the higher the perceived risk, the better the money advantage has to be. The price of $8 to $10 a tonne has been floated by the Coalition. The responsibilities of a Carbon Farmer are high, including holding the carbon in the soils for 100 years. There’s too much uncertainty with this program. It can be cut off at any time. Knowing the pragmatism that surrounds Direct Action, there is too much risk for a farmer to take for a few dollars a tonne. In a Clayton’s market, farmers face a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude with only one buyer. As for the assertion that the price could be zero because farmers take up sustainable farming without the promise of offsets, why haven't they done it already? Get serious.

The journal Nature has made the headlines today with a story about emissions from soils that was misunderstood by journalists reporting on it. The study concluded that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere cause certain soil microbes to release methane and nitrous oxide. The scientists and journalists all assumed that this was bad news for soil carbon sequestration. Logically, however, it is the opposite. It is not the CO2 in soils that causes the additional emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, but the CO2 in the atmosphere. If there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, soils will release more Greenhouse Gases. Soils can take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Therefore we need to get soils working hard as soon as possible. If we don’t, soils will be 20% less effective at taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Increasing CO 2in the atmosphere makes plants grow faster. This extra plant growth is one of the main ways ecosystems could slow climate change. With more CO 2, plants grow more, soaking up carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and depositing carbon in wood and soil. But some of that extra carbon also provides fuel to microorganisms whose byproducts, nitrous oxide and methane, end up in the atmosphere and counteract the cooling effects of more plant growth. "It's an ecological point and counterpoint: the more the plants soak up CO 2, the more microbes release these more potent greenhouse gases," said Bruce Hungate, Professor at Northern Arizona University and co-author on the study. "The microbial counterpoint is only partial, reducing the cooling effect of plants by about 20%."

Professor Alex McBratney of Sydney University - who estimated that soil carbon sequestration could absorb between 10% and 30% of Australia's emissions prior to the study - now estimates CO2 absorption could remove between 8% and 30%.

The Gillard Government has announced a $1.3bn package of assistance to Agriculture under the Carbon Tax. This is how the Government announced it. [Our observations in brackets.]

Boosting wider land action

The Government will purchase carbon credits through the Carbon Farming Initiative non-Kyoto Carbon Fund. This $250 million program over six years will create incentives to undertake land-based action such as the storing of soil carbon, revegetation and forest conservation. [This is a blatant adoption of the Opposition's Direct Action approach for agriculture. It was an initiative promoted by Senator Christine Milne in the Multi-Party negotiations.]

Credits from these projects can also be sold to companies wanting to offset their carbon pollution to meet voluntary commitments to carbon neutrality. [These offsets still have to meet the stringent Kyoto requirements which are enshrined in the Carbon Farming Initiative Integrity Standards].

Australia will continue working to develop new international rules that recognise a wider range of action to reduce pollution on the land. In
future, this may allow landholders to sell credits from a wider variety of projects to companies with obligations under the carbon price. [Australia is campaigning to haveArticle 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocols repealed because they block the sale of agricultural offsets on the international compliance market. They force nations wishing to report their agricultural emissions to include non-man made emissions such as those caused by drought or fire.]

Conservation tillage

The Carbon Farming Futures program will include specific support for conservation tillage equipment. This will be delivered by a 15 per cent refundable tax offset for eligible equipment. This will incentivise farmers to move to zero till and minimum tillage farming techniques which can enhance soil carbon, water retention and productivity. [This was an initiative promoted by Tony Windsor MP in the Multi Party Negotiations.]

Farmers will be required to participate in research and methodology development to assist efforts to settle methods for crediting soil carbon under the Carbon Farming Initiative. [A 15% refundable tax offset will not be enough to turn a conviction deep cultivator into a zero-tiller. We need carbon offsets for zero till, which will require abandoning the Additionality Principle.]

Carbon Farming Futures

The Carbon Farming Futures program will deliver $429 million over six years to help farmers and other landholders benefit from financial opportunities under the Carbon Farming Initiative:

• support will be provided for research to investigate new ways of storing carbon and reducing emissions in the land sector, including biochar and biofuels
• this ongoing program will support landholders to take action such as testing new ways to increase soil carbon and reduce emissions
• new funding will be made available to test more effective methods for measuring carbon stored in soils and to integrate carbon farming into everyday farm business
• extension officers and outreach activities will give landholders access to information to help them benefit from carbon farming.

This is fantastic news because Minister Combet told us there was no more $$$ for research after the $25m Soil Carbon Research Program ran out next year. Rob Oakshott and Tony Windsor gave strong voice of asupport for soil carbon during the negotiations. However, more funds should not be an excuse for delaying action on trading. The sooner we can get the highest number of farmers sequestering carbon the better. The next drought is coming.]

The ongoing Biodiversity Fund has been allocated $946 million over the first six years of the program and will support projects that establish, restore, protect or manage biodiverse carbon stores. Funding will be provided for establishing mixed species plantings in targeted areas, such as areas of high conservation value including wildlife corridors, riparian zones and wetlands. [A billion dollars for planting trees? It seems the Greens drove a hard bargain. There are ways to use trees that increases the productivity of farms and ways that do not. Note well.]

The Fund will also support action to prevent the spread of invasive species across connected landscapes and the management of existing biodiverse carbon stores. This includes land already under conservation covenants, subject to land clearing restrictions, and publicly owned native forests

Regional Planning for Climate Change

Regional Natural Resource Management (NRM) organisations are well placed to help plan for climate change and to maximise the social and environmental benefi ts of carbon farming projects. Around $44 million over five years will go to make regional NRM plans climate-ready. This will include funding to develop detailed scenarios on climate change impacts on a regional level. The plans will guide where biosequestration projects should be located in the landscape. This whole of region approach will help to maximise the benefits for biodiversity, water and agricultural production. The plans will provide an assessment of how projects can maximise landscape resilience, improving each region’s ability to tackle and adapt to Australia’s changing climate.

[This is disturbing and could have fatal consequences for soil carbon and sequestration.The market does not need more regulation and bureaucracy . The soil carbon offset is something that is hard enough to sell to farmers as it is without the intrusion of environmental agencies telling farmers where they can establish projects and how to run them. It could scare farmers off.]
[Over the coming days we will seek more detail from the Government.]

The Potential of Australian Farmers to Earn Income from Soil Carbon Sequestration has been estimated at unrealisticially low levels. The peer-reviewed science fails to replicate what farmers can achieve because it studies only monopractice (single practice change), it does not study polypractice (multiple practice changes) which is the real-world behaviour of farmers seeking to enrich their soils and increase their soil carbon levels.

The highest level of increase recorded by scientists studying monopractices is 0.5 tonnes of carbon. Experienced carbon farmers using multiple land management changes have recorded 30 tonnes and more per year for 10 years.

These tonnages are not recognised by government scientists because they have not studied it and have no plans to study it. Officially they don't exist. The studies, when they take place, can take up to 5 years. Years can pass before funding is available, then three year field trials, followed by a year getting the results published in an academic journal before it can be considered 'sound science'.

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists have declared that there is no peer-reviewed science that reveals the potential of carbon farming for soil carbon sequestration. They are right. Public policy has not been informed by knowledge of the existence of the Hidden Tonnes of Soil Carbon.

Carbon farming income as much as $100g per year

The Gillard Government’s announcement of a price for Carbon is welcomed by the Carbon Farming & Trading Association. It is good news for farmers because they can make additional income. Farmers can be paid the carbon price for reducing their emissions or capturing and storing carbon in soils and trees. The Carbon Farming Initiative legislation is complementary to the Carbon Tax legislation and is in the final stages of being passed through the Senate. “Farmers stand to make significant additional income if they take maximum advantage,” says Michael Kiely, Chairman of the Carbon Farming & Trading Association. “If soil carbon CO2 offsets fetch $23 a tonne, our best carbon farmers could make more than $100,000 a year at the top end of estimates.”*

“Add to that offsets earned for reducing methane from animals, reducing nitrogen emissions from animals and fertiliser, removing feral animals, planting native forests, reducing burning stubble and grasslands, etc. and there are many opportunities in prospect for farmers.”

These opportunities will be revealed at the Carbon Farming Conference in Dubbo NSW on 28-29 September, 2011.

*Leading carbon farmers report increases in soil carbon of 2% in a decade: 0.2% @ 30cms @ Bulk Density 1.0: 22tCO2-e/Ha/yr @ $23/t: $506/Ha. For 200Ha: $101,000. (NB. $23/t is the price to apply in the Compliance market. Soil carbon will initially be traded in the Voluntary market, price estimated at $10-15/tCO2-e, but the pathway to the Compliance market is anticipated by the Carbon Farming Initiative. For a more conservative estimate, simply halve the price and the resulting income. Note the above calculation based on 200Ha. Average farm size 800Ha. Note that the price on carbon will rise in the coming decade.)

I want to again highlight some of the evidence that the committee heard and the committee's recommendations, and then seek the minister's response. We heard from Carbon Farmers of Australia and the Carbon Farming and Trading Association who claimed:... the •business as usual‘ rule, which penalizes Landcare farmers and other progressive landholders who have taken up carbon farming techniques early and—potentially—rewards laggards who continue to degrade their soils. The association described this treatment of progressive farmers as 'the ultimate perverse outcome'. They stated: The impact of that is that there will be property not under contract for carbon farming. By that I mean that these progressive farmers will eventually sell out or pass the farm on and there is no guarantee that that regime will continue. We believe that people would not desecrate a carbon rich environment because of the obvious value of such a thing, but it is not guaranteed.