Walking backwards into the future

Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The leadership of the major farmers' groups in NSW and VIC have redefined leadership as walking backwards into the future on the issue of carbon trading. "NSW and Victorian farmer groups are urging producers to be wary of locking into long term carbon trading, " reported the ABC recently. "Both groups see little financial benefit for producers from the new carbon trading to begin in July. NSW Farmers Association's senior vice president and head of their sustainability taskforce, Sam Archer, says the returns are not there due to falling global carbon prices and restrictive land management."Potentially low commercial benefits, restrictions on land use practices, the onerous land use permanence requirements of 100 years, and as we have seen overseas, a high transactional cost (so) all of which I would encourage people to err on the side of caution." The President of the Victorian Farmers Federation, Andrew Broad, says farmers reject the notion of a carbon economy. "Globally we have been fools by making our agriculture less competitive and we think somehow that we are saving the planet."

The comments are poorly informed. EG., the low prices currently on offer reflect the global financial crisis as companies realise the value of offsets they have on their books for liquidity purposes. Now is the perfect time to buy some cheap offsets to cover your future liability. A farmer sitting on offsets would be wise to keep sitting until better prices are available. Few farm commodities are as bankable. These gentlemen may not be aware (because they are not engaged in the process) that there are several insurance and buffer mechanisms being proposed to reduce the 100 Year risk. Sam's complaint about 'restrictions on land use practices' seem odd since he has his own scheme called the National Ecosystem Services Scheme (ESS) which would see farmers paid for land stewardship - which involves 'setting aside marginal land' for ecological 'goods and services'. The only difference between the CFI system and Sam's Scheme is how the farmer is paid. We believe in markets. Sam believes in taxes: "Potential funding for the scheme could come from a GST on fresh food..." Whoa! Australians love their farmers, but not enough to pay 10% more for food. And governments tend to find it difficult keeping their hands off a GST. Stewardship payments are handouts which institutionalise the top-down, dependency relationship traditional for farmers. They can be switched on or off at will. In The Land's Year of the Farmer supplement recently, Mr Archer said his proposed ESS could become "the cornerstone of Australia's response to climate change..." But it has no connection to Climate Change. Why is the carbon market anathema to many in agriculture? Why are those involved in it seen to be ethically compromised? This has motivated some to propose "Market Based Instruments" which are not markets at all, but schemes that pit farmer against farmer to compete for handouts.

Andrew Broad claims to speak for farmers who reject the carbon economy. Do they reject the Government's decision to absolve farmers for responsibility for all their emissions on farm and reward them instead with tradable offsets for their efforts to reduce methane and nitrous oxide? Or the option of being paid to enrich their soils and strategically revegetate their landscapes? Is Mr Broad's climate denialism typical of farmers? The dairy farmers are hardest hit by the price on carbon because of their energy usage. Yet Dairy Australia says on its website: “Belief’ in Climate Change is no longer relevant because the very idea of Climate Change, backed up by clearly more volatile weather events, has created its own, overwhelming social and economic momentum. ‘Climate Change’ is fundamentally changing everything from the behaviour of Governments to consumer choices. It has become one of the critical lenses through which every decision must pass – how individuals and industries react will fundamentally their future resilience and competitive advantage."

These are the facts: 
  1. No farmer is obliged to change anything in the way they manage their holdings when the carbon markets start operating.
  2. No farmer is obliged to get involved with carbon markets. 
  3. No farmer should rush into any arrangement, especially planting trees. Changing the way you manage pastures or cropping is less restrictive of land use than planting trees. The tree companies want to sell as many trees as possible. Too many trees can be as bad as too few trees. The strategic placement of vegetation can enhance production. 
  4. Your advisor should have experience in whole-of-farm-planning for carbon farming. Contact the Carbon Farming & Trading Association to be put in touch with experienced carbon farmers who know what they are talking about.

Additionality Trap defanged

Saturday, February 25, 2012
As members of the Bridge Consortium, we met yesterday with representatives of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests to discuss the reaction to our Soil Carbon Methodology. During the meeting we brought up the issue of the Additionality Trap (landholders falling into a permanent state of 'business as usual' by changing land management practices for scientific trials, etc. when they intend to make the change when they can earn offsets for it (when a methodology comes available). Representatives from both departments indicated that this was not an outcome they could accept and that something would be done about it. In the meantime we recommend that a statutory declaration of the landholder's prior intent We will report the DAFF/DCCEE mechanism when it appears..

Plantation carbon trees dangerous - Fire Services

Friday, February 24, 2012
The Fire and Emergency Services Authority (FESA) in Western Australia says an increase in the number of carbon capturing tree plantations poses a huge fire risk. More native plantations have arisen in traditional farming areas since the onset of the carbon farming industry, after the Kyoto Protocol ratification came into effect in 2008 and more are expected to be planted via the CFI and the Biodiversity Fund. While there is no method for trading soil carbon offsets, trees are threatening to dominate farmland. Most of the plantations are owned by companies so have no-one onsite to put out fires when they start."By their definition these areas are carbon sequestration areas which means that in theory they're not burnt and they remain a repository to trap the carbon," says Great Southern area manager John Tonkin. "Not withstanding that, there are natural effects like lightning ... which may occur that may ... [start] these parcels of land on fire."

Hard Questions for the Year of The Farmer

Thursday, February 23, 2012
AN extract from a speech by Wendell Berry delivered in 1974 in Spokane, Washington. It formed the kernel of his book The Unsettling Of America, 1977. It asks the hard questions we should be asking about Agriculture in the Year of the Farmer.

In the decades since World War II the farms of Henry County [Kentucky] have become increasingly mechanized. Though they are still comparatively diversified, they are less diversified than they used to be. The holdings are larger, the owners are fewer. The land is falling more and more into the hands of speculators and professional people from the cities who-in spite of all the scientific agricultural miracles-still have much more money than farmers. There are not nearly enough people on the farms to maintain them properly, and they are for the most part visibly deteriorating. The number of part-time farmers and ex-farmers increases every year. Our harvests depend more and more upon the labor of old men and little boys. The farm people live less and less upon their own produce, more and more from the grocery stores. The best of them are more worried about money and more overworked than ever before. Among the people as a whole, the focus of interest has largely shifted from the household to the automobile; the ideals of workmanship and thrift have been replaced by the goals of leisure, comfort and entertainment-for, as my friend, Maurice Telleen says, "this nation has created the world's first broad-based hedonism."

And nowhere that I know is there a market for a hen or a bucket of cream or a few dozen eggs. Those markets were done away with in the name of sanitation-but to the enormous enrichment of the large producers. Future historians will no doubt remark upon the inevitable association, with us, between sanitation and filthy lucre. It is, of course, one of the miracles of science that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons.

In all of this few people whose testimony would have mattered have seen the connection between "modernization" of agricultural techniques and the disintegration of the culture and the communities of farming. What we have called agricultural progress has, in fact, involved the forcible displacement of millions of people.

I remember, during the fifties, the outrage with which certain of our leaders spoke of the forced removal of the populations of villages in communist countries. I also remember that at that same time, in Washington, the word on farming was "Get big or get out"-a policy that is still in effect. The only difference here is in the method: the force used by the communists was military; with us it has been economic, a "free" market in which the freest were the richest. The attitudes were equally cruel, and I believe that in the long run the results will be equally damaging-not just to the concerns and values of the human spirit, but to the practical possibilities of survival.

And so those who could not get big got out-not just in my community but in farm communities all over the country. But bigness is a most amorphous and unstable category. As a social or economic goal it is totalitarian; it establishes an inevitable tendency toward the tyrannical one that will be the biggest of all. Many who got big to stay in are now being driven out by those who are still bigger. The aim of bigness implies not one social or cultural aim that is not noxious. Its influence on us may already have been disastrous, and we have not yet seen the worst.

And this community-killing agriculture, with its monomania of bigness, is not primarily the work of farmers, though it has burgeoned upon their weaknesses. It is the work of the institutions of agriculture: the experts and the agri-businessmen, who have promoted so-called efficiency at the expense of community, and quantity at the expense of quality.

In 1973 1,000 Kentucky dairies went out of business. They were the victims of policies by which we imported dairy products to compete with our own, and exported so much grain as to cause a drastic rise in the price of feed. Typically, an agricultural expert at the University of Kentucky, my colleague, was willing to applaud the failure of 1,000 dairymen, whose cause he supposedly being paid-with their money-to serve. They were inefficient producers, he concluded, who needed to be eliminated.

He did not say-indeed, there was no indication that he had even considered-what might be the limits of his criterion or his logic. Does he propose to applaud this same process year after year until "biggest" and "most efficient" become synonymous with "only"? This sort of brainlessness is invariably justified by pointing to the enormous productivity of American agriculture. But any abundance, in any amount, is illusory if it does not safeguard its producers-and in American agriculture abundance has tended to destroy its producers.

Along with the rest of society, the established agriculture has shifted its emphasis-even its interest-from quality to quantity. And along with the rest of society it has failed to see that, in the long run, quantity is inseparable from quality. To pursue quantity alone is to destroy those disciplines in the producers that are the only assurance of quantity. The preserver of abundance is excellence.

What are the results of such thinking? The results are the drastic decline in farm population and political strength; the growth of a vast, uprooted, dependent and unhappy urban population. (Our rural and urban problems have largely caused each other.) The result is an unimaginable waste of land, of energy, of fertility, of human beings. The result is that the life of the land, which in its native processes is infinite, has been made totally dependent upon the finite, scarce and expensive products of industry. The result is the disuse of so-called marginal lands, potentially productive, but dependent upon intensive human care and long-term familiarity and affection. The result is the virtual destruction of the farm culture without which farming, in any but the exploitive and extractive sense, is impossible.

My point is that food is a cultural, not a technological, product. A culture is not a collection of relics and ornaments, but a practical necessity, and its destruction invokes calamity. A healthy culture is a communal order of memory, insight, value, and aspiration. It would reveal the human necessities and the human limits. It would clarify our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other. It would assure that the necessary restraints be observed, that the necessary work be done, and that it be done well. A healthy farm culture can only be based upon familiarity; it can only grow among a people soundly established upon the land; it would nourish and protect a human intelligence of the land that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. The growth of such a culture was once a strong possibility in the farm communities of this country. We now have only the sad remnants of those communities. If we allow another generation to pass without doing what is necessary to enhance and embolden that possibility, we will lose it altogether. And then we will not only invoke calamity-we will deserve it.

It's only a market. It won't kill you.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Carbon Farming is now law. It is the Law of the Land. It is being progressively implemented by the approval of "Methodologies" which govern the way offsets can be earned. It is a fait accomplis. Still some people champion alternative solutions. This is good. Diversity means opportunity. For instance, Sam Archer's National Ecosystem Services Scheme (ESS) would see farmers paid for land stewardship - which involves 'setting aside marginal land' for ecological 'goods and services' such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, improved water quality and bushland protection. (Taking animals off land and locking it up is the fast way to degrade it.) Government regulation would be 'light' to avoid the scheme becoming a victim of political whim and changes of government. (Can't see how this works.) "Potential funding for the scheme could come from a GST on fresh food..." Whoa! The Community loves its farmers and expects them to protect the environment, but not enough to pay for it. And governments tend to find the concept of 'light regulation' difficult and keeping their hands off a GST? Stewardship payments are handouts which institutionalise the top-down, dependency relationship traditional for farmers. They can be switched on or off at will. The 600lb gorilla not in the room is the market. The market for offsetting carbon emissions... "Mr Archer said his proposed ESS could become the cornerstone of Australia's response to climate change..." But it has no connection to Climate Change. The carbon market is anathema to many in agriculture - and those involved in it are seen to be ethically compromised. This has motivated some to propose "Market Based Instruments" which are not markets at all, but schemes that pit farmer against farmer to compete for handouts.

My colleague and fellow director of Healthy Soils Australia, Walter Jehne, has an excellent scheme: “The Net Emissions Reduction Incentive“ scheme or N.E.R.I. "Emitters have an option of ... offsetting their emissions ... by buying offsets generated by farmers through soil-carbon farming, whereby farmers manage their land in a regenerative, holistic, productive, resilient system that sequesters carbon as HUMUS in the soil, giving long-term food and water security."

" There would be no opportunity for carbon to be on-traded as a commodity."

Farmers are commodity marketers by nature. They are used to derivatives as a concept. The answer to every problem is not Government interference. Cooperatives don't guarantee protection from being ripped off. There is a role for stewardship payments and for Government regulation. But we are not dealing with a temporary change. We need a change in culture and tradition, a permanent shift in the relationship between humanity and nature in the way we extract our food, clothing and shelter from it. The free market drives innovation and incites entrepreneurs to develop new solutions, new technologies, new answers. Our future is bright only if bright ideas are allowed to flourish in an open market. Open minds are needed, not ancient prejudices.

Last chance for independent advice on the Carbon Farming Initiative before FarmReady funding runs out.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012
For farmers wondering what the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) has for them, there’s an opportunity to find out while FarmReady subsidies are still available. FarmReady funding runs out in June 2012. Farmers could potentially have 65% of the course fee reimbursed if they act soon. “An Introduction to Carbon Farming & Trading” is a 1-day Workshop that will equip farmers to make decisions about the CFI opportunities they will be offered. It is FarmReady Approved which means attendees may be eligble for a 65% subsidy of the course fee. The CFI is moving quickly as new income streams are emerging. Already there are possibilities under the headings of “Environmental Plantings” (farm forestry), “Savanna Burning”, and “Manure Management” (Piggeries). Carbon Farmers of Australia have an application for a Soil Carbon Methodology before the expert panel. Course Participants get more than just a day’s training. They get a copy of the Carbon Farming Handbook, the only one of its kind. They receive email updates in the Carbon Farming Newsletter. They receive invitations to events such as the Carbon Farming Conference where you meet with other ‘Carbon Farmers’. And they become part of the community that is working to restore farm landscapes to health while paying farmers for their role in this important national responsibility.You will have many people offering you opportunities that sound good but may not be what they seem. After attending “An Introduction to Carbon Farming & Trading” you will know the right questions to ask to avoid pitfalls.

The course is delivered by Carbon Farmers of Australia, experienced professionals who have six years practical hands-on engagement in the carbon farming 'industry', having led the campaign for farmers' rights to carbon credits under the banner of the Carbon Coalition and now have established the Carbon Farming & Trading Association. The have staged the Carbon Farming Conference every year since 2007 and publish the Carbon Farming Handbook.

“I believe that we have the Carbon Farming Initiative today because of the efforts of the Kielys over the past 5 years.” 
Professor John Crawford, University of Sydney

“There would have been no Carbon Farming Initiative if not for the work of Michael and Louisa Kiely.” 
Hon. Greg Hunt, Shadow Minister for Environment & Climate Action.

Upcoming dates include:
  • BENDIGO 27 February, 
  • WARRAGUL 1 March, 
  • TERANG 5 March, 
  • WAGGA WAGGA 13 March, 
  • ORANGE 15 March, 
  • SINGLETON 22 March, 
  • JAMBEROO 26 March
We can run a workshop in your district. Contact Louisa on 02 6374 0329 or louisa@carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au to find out how it works.

New Edition of Carbon Farming Handbook - Contributions?

Monday, February 20, 2012
The Carbon Farming Handbook is uniquely useful as it forms a comprehensive introduction to the discipline. The Handbook is being updated. Contributions are welcome. We are particularly interested in techniques for increasing soil carbon levels. The list of contents (below) reveal the gaps. We also welcome support from advertisers and sponsors, companies that want to introduce themselves to the many new farmers entering the carbon field. We have various ways to make the introduction. Call us on 02 6374 0329 or email michael@carbonfarmersof australia.com.au.

Contents

  1. What is Soil Carbon? 
  2. An Introduction to Carbon Farming 
  3. Can Farmers Slow Climate Change? 
  4. Changing the Way We Farm 
  5. Soil Organic Matter 
  6. Soil Organic Carbon 
  7. Benefits of SOC 
  8. The Soil Carbon Solution 
  9. Can We Capture Carbon? 
  10. Carbon Farming Techniques 
  11. Grazing Management 
  12. Conservation Tillage 
  13. Pasture Cropping 
  14. Biological Farming (including Organic Farming) 
  15. Biochar: What Do We Know? 
  16. Albrecht Natural Farming System 
  17. Biodynamic Farming 
  18. Natural Sequence Farming 
  19. Landsmanship: Reading The Landcape 
  20. How Nature Farms: Sir Albert Howard 
  21. Microclimates: Can Carbon Farming Make It Rain? 
  22. Microbes Making Carbon 
  23. The Root of the Matter 
  24. Rhizodeposition: A Hole In The Bucket? 
  25. The Liquid Carbon Pathway 
  26. Carbon Farming: Grassroots Innovation 
  27. The Hidden Costs of Soil Carbon Sequestration? 
  28. Farmers Lead Compost Revoluton 
  29. Triggering Terra Biologica 
  30. Is Fertiliser Bad For Carbon? 
  31. The Myth Of Nitrogen Fertilisation For Soil Carbon 
  32. Trees and Carbon Farming 
  33. Farm Forest Offsets Now Available 
  34. Carbon Sinks & Sources 
  35. Managing High Energy Costs in Dairy 
  36. Pig Farmers Earn Credits For Manure 
  37. 22 Ways To Go Low N2O 
  38. How to Calculate Carbon Credits 
  39. Carbon Farm Plan: Soil Carbon Optimising Tool 
  40. The Carbon Farming Initiative 
  41. What Is A Carbon Offset? 
  42. How Does The Market Work? 
  43. How To Weigh Up A Soil Carbon Proposal 
  44. What’s In The CFI For You? 
  45. Did Agriculture Dodge A Bullet? 
  46. Why Is The Government Doing This? 
  47. CFI 101: The Basics 
  48. How To Earn Australian Carbon Credit Units 
  49. The Positive List: What You Can Do 
  50. The Negative List: What You Cannot Do 
  51. Permanence: What You Must Do 
  52. A Soil Carbon Methodology 
  53. Carbon Tax Funds Farming 
  54. Carbon Offsets Value Proposition 
  55. “How Much Can I Make From Soil Carbon?” 
  56. Potential Returns 
  57. Potential of Australian Soils 
  58. Australian Farm Offsets: Building The Brand 
  59. Frequently Asked Questions 
  60. Carbon Glossary 
  61. Acronymns 
  62. Soil, Food & Human Health: It’s Personal

Farmers fall into the Additionality Trap?

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Farmers are in danger of forfeiting their right to earn carbon credits for on-farm activities if they move too soon. They can fall into the Additionality Trap if they get involved in on-farm trials before joining an approved offset program. And there aren't many methodologies approved. This is perplexing for those groups working to submit applications for funds under the Government's Action On The Ground because it leaves them in no-man's-land. The Carbon Farming & Trading Association has requested that the Departments involved - DAFF and DCCEE - provide farmers with a mechanism for avoiding this pitfall. Here are the details:
 
Farmers who take part in the Government’s $99 million Action On The Ground program could fall into the “Additionality Trap” and be excluded from the Carbon Farming Initiative’s Carbon Credits scheme. The program aims to “to assist landholders trial and demonstrate ways to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and/or increase carbon stored in soil.” But farmers who change their practices as part of these trials before they are registered in an offsets project with an approved methodology will almost inevitably make themselves ineligible to earn offsets that they can trade.

The CFI’s Additionality Standard disqualifies any activity that is already underway (‘business as usual’). For a project to deliver genuine carbon abatement, it must result in a reduction in atmospheric greenhouse gas that is additional to what would have occurred in the absence of the project. Currently there are only 4 methodologies approved: methane flaring from waste, savanna burning, piggery methane flaring, and native forest planting. The priorities for Action On The Ground are reduction of methane and nitrous oxide emissions and increased storage of soil carbon. Activities that would be eligible for funding under the program include most of the main Carbon Farming practices, which means that the “Additionality Trap” throws the net wide:
  • animal management and feed strategies that can reduce methane emissions
  • management strategies to reduce soil nitrous oxide emissions including the use of chemical inhibitors
  • planting, rotation, cropping or grazing practices to either reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from soil and/or increase carbon stored in soil
  • on-farm management practices and abatement technologies to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural wastes
  • other practices and abatement technologies that can be demonstrated on-farm to have the potential to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and/or increase carbon stored in soil.
DAFF lists a number of practices to be trialled for soil carbon that would be adopted to earn offsets: “Action on the Ground is seeking applications for on-farm projects to trial and demonstrate practices that can be used to increase and maintain the amount of carbon stored in soil. Such practices may include, but are not limited to, crop rotation strategies to reduce or eliminate fallow periods, addition of pasture phase to crop practices and/or cropping pastures, soil amendments, offsite additions to soil (such as claying, addition of organic materials etc), increasing pasture cover and/or inclusion of perennial species, conversion from cropping to perennial pasture and restoration of degraded farm land.”

The “Additionality Trap” also disqualifies farmers in areas where the offset practices had become ‘common practice’. (If more than 5% of farmers in a district or industry segment have adopted the practice, new adoptees are deemed to not be motivated by CFI considerations and any abatement arising would have happened anyway.) Local NRM bodies engaging farmers in certain districts in “soil carbon trials” not only endanger participating farmers, but all others in the district.
 
“Ignorance of the basic principles of carbon farming and trading is dangerous for farmers and their advisers. We estimate the losses by farmers as a result of these types of incidents could amount to significant dollars,” says Michael Kiely of the Carbon Farming & Trading Association. “These farmers must be informed, if only so they can manage the risk.”
It is to be wondered if the Government's CFI training course would include practical trading information of this type or whether it will be a "Government Information Campaign."
“This is not the first time there has been a collision between government programs due to misunderstanding the CFI. The confusion over carbon credits for Henbury Station is a classic example of silos colliding.”
 

Ruling sought

 
The Association is seeking a ruling from the DCCEE and DAFF on the following issues:
  • Will there be a suspension of the “Business As Usual” provision of the Additionality Standard for those farmers involved in the Action On The Ground program?
  • Will there be a suspension of the “Business As Usual” and “Common Practice” provisions of the Additionality Standard for those farmers involved in “Soil Carbon Trials” staged by CMAs and DPIs?
  • Will there be a mechanism provided for farmers who intend to earn offsets for activities for which there has yet to be a methodology approved to register their intention?

Dairy Australia Denies Denial

Saturday, February 18, 2012
Australia’s dairy farmers have been given a cold shower on Climate Change by Dairy Australia. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in Climate Change or not, because it is now a major political and social force that is and will continue to impact on all industries, including dairy,” it says on its website. Many in the farm community have been convinced by those who deny the science of Climate Change. “The physical reality of Climate Change remains is still debatable for some. This will continue to be the case because it is very hard to differentiate small changes to the average climate from the background of large and poorly understood climate variability. However, ‘belief’ in Climate Change is no longer relevant because the very idea of Climate Change, backed up by clearly more volatile weather events, has created its own, overwhelming social and economic momentum. ‘Climate Change’ is fundamentally changing everything from the behaviour of Governments to consumer choices. It has become one of the critical lenses through which every decision must pass – how individuals and industries react will fundamentally their future resilience and competitive advantage.”

Hysterical Predictions


This approach is in contrast to the hysterical response of industry bodies to the Price on Carbon. "Dairy farm families will be slugged $4200 by the Carbon Tax, says ABARES" This is how the media reported it, but ABARES said nothing like it in its report "Possible short-run effects of a carbon pricing scheme on Australian agriculture". This is the worst case scenario. It is based on processors passing on 100% of their cost increases to farmers, which they can't and won't do, according to Fonterra, one of the biggest. Before both processors and farmers take action to reduce their electricity usage, the impact could be as low as just over $1000, says the ABARES report. "In most cases, any cost increases from a carbon pricing scheme will be shared along the supply chain between farmers, processors, wholesalers and retailers, exporters and final consumers," it says. Fonterra confirmed this in October 2011 when general manager for sustainability Francois Joubert said the company will wear its own increased power costs as best it can, without passing those on to suppliers. "It's increasingly difficult for us to pass costs on to our markets, to our customers; it's also difficult to pass costs on to our suppliers. We are in a very competitive milk supply environment and so therefore it's our job to mitigate increased costs within the business and that's our intention."

Wake up and smell the manure

Friday, February 17, 2012
Australia’s dairy farmers have been given a cold shower on Climate Change by Dairy Australia. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in Climate Change or not, because it is now a major political and social force that is and will continue to impact on all industries, including dairy,” it says on its website. Many in the farm community have been convinced by those who deny the science of Climate Change. “The physical reality of Climate Change remains is still debatable for some. This will continue to be the case because it is very hard to differentiate small changes to the average climate from the background of large and poorly understood climate variability. 

However, ‘belief’ in Climate Change is no longer relevant because the very idea of Climate Change, backed up by clearly more volatile weather events, has created its own, overwhelming social and economic momentum. ‘Climate Change’ is fundamentally changing everything from the behaviour of Governments to consumer choices. It has become one of the critical lenses through which every decision must pass – how individuals and industries react will fundamentally their future resilience and competitive advantage.” This approach is in contrast to the hysterical response of industry bodies to the Price on Carbon.

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