States’ Greenhouse paper angers farmers

A new farmers’ lobby group has expressed disappointment at the Greenhouse Scheme discussion paper released on the 16 August, 2006 by the State and Territory Governments. “The paper ignores the enormous contribution agricultural soils can make to storing carbon,” says Michael Kiely, the convenor of the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming, a lobby group that believes the best way to store carbon is to reward farmers for land management techniques that can sequester vast amounts of carbon in agricultural soils. “While millions of trees are being planted and various solutions are being investigated, none has the capacity to sequester sufficient CO2 in the next 50 years to meet the Greenhouse challenge. Only soils can do it. Yet the only mention of soils in the discussion paper is the emissions that can occur when it is disturbed (ploughed) or artificially fertilized. Once again the poor old farmer is painted as the bad guy when in fact he is a hero.”