Congratulations to Tony Windsor, the Member for New England, who flies the flag for soil carbon in the National Parliament. He managed to stage a debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 24 June 2008 during which the case for carbon farming was made.
Key points made during the debate were:
• The use of “no-till farming in some of the better farming areas, for instance, has effectively produced about 150 to 200 millimetres of moisture available for the cropping cycle.” (Tony Windsor)
• Mr Windsor had arranged for Minister Burke to visit carbon farmers in his electorate: “The minister would have seen some of the perennial pasture techniques that are out there now, where there have been quite massive gains in humus and organic matter in the soil and the impact those techniques have on the moisture infiltration and productivity of those pastures.
• These new techniques have the potential to drought-proof farms and sequester carbon.
• The scientific community made a mistake when they based their conclusions on old-style farming techniques:
“What is happening is that CSIRO and other institutions are basing their measurements and the capacity to measure on old-style farming techniques, not the newer cropping techniques and some of the newer pasture system techniques.” (Tony Windsor)
• The scientific community have not been focussed on soil carbon measurement, because it has been ‘too hard’: “What is happening is that CSIRO and other institutions are basing their measurements and the capacity to measure on old-style farming techniques, not the newer cropping techniques and some of the newer pasture system techniques.” (Tony Windsor)
• Growers groups should be funded to do research: “There are people out there across Australia—in Emerald, in Western Australia, in New South Wales, in Victoria and in South Australia—who are doing their own carbon monitoring work to look at this measurement problem. The challenge I made to the Prime Minister, and I do it again to the House now, is that the government should be funding these people, the innovators in agriculture, and providing measurement campaigns with those people, so if they are getting the numbers wrong, if what they are saying is not correct, it can be easily proven. What is happening is that CSIRO and other institutions are basing their measurements and the capacity to measure on old-style farming techniques, not the newer cropping techniques and some of the newer pasture system techniques.” (Tony Windsor)
• An Emissions Trading System without soil carbon would be unjust: “If we go into an emissions-trading system and we do not know what contribution agriculture can potentially make—not just through sequestration in trees but sequestration in our soils—we really will not know what charges to lay off against the major emitters if there is a more natural way of looking at the problem.” (Tony Windsor)
• Science has been looking in the wrong places: “Outside of the ocean, most of our carbon is held in our soils—not in our atmosphere; in our soils. We have let a little bit go by burning coal et cetera. Eighty-two per cent of the terrestrial biosphere is in our soils. Most of the work that has been done in carbon trade and carbon management has been about vegetation, has been about trees. Essentially, our scientists have not been focusing on one of the major contributors due to natural sequestration. As soon as they have come to a difficulty in the measurement, they have walked away from it. This is an issue about soil health. A healthy soil is a more productive soil; it is one that holds more moisture. If we are talking about drought policy, Minister, irrespective of whether this whole emissions-trading debate went away tomorrow, we should be looking at sequestering carbon in our soils much more thoroughly… (Tony Windsor)
• Minister Burke is critical of existing extension arrangements: “The investment of those agencies involved in developing some great practices which could be adopted on-farm all too often do not make it to the farmer.”
• The Government expects that there will be some farmers forced to leave the industry: “There will be some people, as they face the reality of the climate, who will reach the point where they simply believe that they need to pursue a life away from agriculture. The Climate Change Adjustment Program will have mechanisms in place to assist in the decision and that adjustment. Ultimately, if the decision is taken, the Rural Financial Counselling Service will assist with the adjustment itself.” (Tony Burke)
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