Grains Council and the AGO data gap

Hello,

Here is a point by point refutation of the Grains Council's hatchet job on soil carbon credits (appended below). It was all over the rural media. I have to reassure our constituency by immediate response.


PRESS RELEASE

11/7/2007

THE GREAT SOIL DATA SCANDAL

The Grains Council is misusing Australian Greenhouse Office science to attack the emerging soil carbon credit market.

“The AGO does not have the data to back up the Grains Council's claims about Australian soils,” says Convenor of the Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming, Wellington woolgrower Michael Kiely. The Carbon Coalition has campaigned for soil carbon credits for 18 months to give farmers an additional revenue stream to encourage landscape restoration.

“We reported more than a month ago that the data sets used to compile the reports on soils for National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) were incomplete and that they were incapable of sustaining the conclusions people were drawing,” he says. “We warned the AGO that conclusions based on these data sets are misleading and wrong. Alan Umber’s report is flawed due to his reliance on this data.”

The evidence is available in the NCAS Technical Reports.

"The scientists did a brilliant job with limited resources. And they qualify their findings vigorously, seeking to limit the potential for misunderstanding. But no amount of qualification could protect the data from being dramatically misconstrued to slander Australian soils and attack plans to launch the soil carbon market," he says.

The Grains Council Report is wrong on 9 counts:

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“Our soils are very old, very fragile, very thin, very weathered. Often we are running soils with 1% or less carbon.” (ABCRadio Country Hour, 11 July, 2007)

CORRECTION:

Generalisations about Australians soils are dangerous. Alpine soils can contain around 10% soil carbon, and desert soils around 0.5%. Soils tested for soils workshops with farmers at Mudgee and Rylstone have between 0.9% and 7% Carbon and averaging 2.2% at Mudgee and 2.7% at Rylstone.

One percent of carbon is not an insignificant amount. One percent in a 30cm of topsoil soil can translate into 42 tonnes of soil carbon which equates to 154 tonnes of CO2. (The conversion of Carbon to Carbon Dioxide: C x 3.67 = CO2)

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“The limited potential for Australian soils to increase levels of organic carbon, with estimates by many scientists of less than 100kg per hectare per year, even under the most effective non irrigated farming systems.”

CORRECTION:

No AGO research has studied the “potential” of Australian soils to take up carbon. Most official studies recorded poor carbon performance because they studied only traditional techniques which are destructive of soil carbon.

“They didn’t find it because they weren’t looking for it,” says Mr Kiely. There were no advanced farming practices – such as time controlled grazing, pasture cropping, biological farming – included in the official studies.

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“You can lift soil carbon 0.001% a year if you’re lucky.” (ABC Radio Country Hour, 11 July, 2007)

CORRECTION:

This statement is based on out-of-date data. Cases that are in the pipeline for reporting include the following:

1. Pasture cropping/time controlled grazing combination in Central West NSW that has recorded a 100% increase in soil carbon to 4% over a decade, with most of the growth in the last few years.

2. A till-to-no-till case in Albany, WA where an increase from 4% to 6% was achieved in 3 years.

3. A 20 year study of till-to-no-till techniques at Wagga NSW recorded a gain of 12 tonnes of carbon per hectare, or 0.6%C per year.

Other projects studying ‘carbon farming’ techniques include a NSW Department of Primary Industries $246,000 climate action project to study the role of pastures in locking up carbon under a range of management practices in central and southern NSW and high profile carbon sequestration studies using combinations of carbon farming techniques in 3 states, funded by coal mining interests, including Rio Tinto Coal.

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“Normal farming practices emit greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, with the latter having a global warming potential equal to 310 times that of CO2.”

CORRECTION:

“Normal farming practices” are no guide to the potential of land management to make a difference. “Carbon Farming Practices” reduce emissions of CO2 and NO2 and enable the farmer to ‘grow’ carbon to offset their emissions.

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“Any carbon trading scheme will require farmers to show that increased organic carbon will have to remain permanently in the soil for up to 70 or more years”

CORRECTION:

The 100 Year Rule applies to forests. But on the biggest carbon exchange trading farm soils – the Chicago Climate Exchange - soil carbon is traded in renewable four year contracts.

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“Drought or changed farming techniques may cause carbon to be released to the atmosphere and this is an important factor to consider while balancing grain production emissions with any carbon sequestration.”

CORRECTION:

Carbon Farming techniques actually increase the soil’s ability to hold and use available water better than traditional techniques. However severe drought is a reality and carbon trading contracts include insurances and make good provisions, like any other contract.

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“Any carbon trading scheme will involve enforceable contracts and auditing of farms. This will increase costs for farmers, possibly outweighing any financial benefits.”

CORRECTION:

The Chicago Climate Exchange arrangements set aside 30% of the trade value for aggregation of growers into 25,000 acre trading units, auditing, administration, etc. Farmers in the US don’t seem to mind. Total volume traded to date on the CCX is 2.7 million tonnes.

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“More accurate measuring of carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions will need to be developed.”

CORRECTION:

Millions have already been spent developing emissions calculators. The technology exists. It is time to populate the calculators with data. What’s the hold-up?

GRAINS COUNCIL:

“Farmers need to be cautious about any attractive sounding claims about the income earning potential from future carbon trading schemes. These will have significant transaction and verification costs, involve long term contracts, be enforceable and auditable, and may not end up paying more than a few dollars per hectare”. Mr Umbers said.

CORRECTION:

“Farmers need to be cautious about anything they hear about trading carbon, especially from the ill-informed who have studied the market by relying on official research that was never designed to support the claims made by ‘industry researchers’, says Mr Kiely.

“The market for soil carbon is not going to go away because Soil Carbon Denialists say it should.”

THE CARBON COALITION AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING

www.carboncoalition.com.au
http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com

Michael Kiely
Convenor

“Uamby” RMB 384
Uamby Lane
Goolma 2852

02 6374 0329
0417 280 540

alan@grainscouncil.com

Grains Council of Australia Ltd. AB
Carbon Sequestration – Caution Needed - July 10th 2007

The Grains Council of Australia says that Australian grain producers have been making a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the last 15 years, but are unlikely to benefit from a carbon credit or trading scheme, due to the low carbon sequestration potential of most of the soils in grain producing areas.

The Manager of the Grains Council / GRDC ‘Farming Practices for Sustainability’ project, Alan Umbers, said carbon in soils was a complex and easily misunderstood subject.

“Several considerations need to be kept in mind in any debate about the potential for carbon sequestration in grain production.” Mr Umbers said. “They include:

* The limited potential for Australian soils to increase levels of organic carbon, with estimates by many scientists of less than 100kg per hectare per year, even under the most effective non irrigated farming systems,

* Normal farming practices emit greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, with the latter having a global warming potential equal to 310 times that of CO2,

* Any carbon trading scheme will require farmers to show that increased organic carbon will have to remain permanently in the soil for up to 70 or more years.
* Drought or changed farming techniques may cause carbon to be released to the atmosphere and this is an important factor to consider while balancing grain production emissions with any carbon sequestration,

* Any carbon trading scheme will involve enforceable contracts and auditing of farms. This will increase costs for farmers, possibly outweighing any financial benefits

* More accurate measuring of carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions will need to be developed. Grain production is a biological process, subject to seasonal variation, changing farming practices, different crop types and fertiliser use. All of these factors interact with soil microbes.

Mr Umbers said that, while there was potential for increasing organic carbon in soils, the sequestration potential in Australian cropping land was very limited and measuring the whole carbon system and cycle on a farm was an imprecise science.

“A lot of comment is being made about the potential for Australia's 20 million hectares of cropping land to absorb tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 per year. We contend that the potential just doesn't exist.” Mr Umbers said.

“Australian soils are not comparable to Northern Hemisphere soils in their carbon sequestration capacity. Different soils have differing organic carbon storage capacity, in the same way soils vary in their ability to absorb and hold water”, he said.

“Any carbon added to the soil becomes part of the carbon cycle and may not be ‘locked’ there permanently. For example, in a drought, much of the soil biota dies and the decay of these micro organisms releases carbon back to the atmosphere”.

“We also have to consider that any addition of carbon to soil also has to be balanced against emissions that occur from the use of fuel and nitrogenous fertilisers on farms. Realistic estimates of the potential to increase soil carbon are less than 100kg per hectare per year, or about 2 million tonnes a year across the country,” Mr Umbers said.

“However, this ‘additional’ carbon added to soils has to be maintained every year, or the soil carbon levels will slip back to their pre-existing levels, thanks to the natural carbon cycle”, he said.

“Data generated from our Farming Practices for Sustainability project has indicated that the Australian grains industry has reduced its greenhouse emissions significantly over the last 15 years. We are now using about half the diesel used 15 years ago, a current saving of 500 thousand tonnes of CO2 emissions per year”, he said.

“There are potential future emission reductions to be made from better management of nitrogenous fertilisers. We need to do more research in this area, and we’re working on the project with the Australian Greenhouse Office this year”.

“Farmers need to be cautious about any attractive sounding claims about the income earning potential from future carbon trading schemes. These will have significant transaction and verification costs, involve long term contracts, be enforceable and auditable, and may not end up paying more than a few dollars per hectare”. Mr Umbers said.

ENDS