Hooray for NFF’s David Crombie

The National Farmers' Federation has taken up the cause of farmers who will bear the costs of their emissions but are being refused their soil carbon credits to meet the bill. "We already know that the current Kyoto pact fails to adequately account for the 'life cycle' of agricultural emissions. While farming's emissions are counted, the provisions to acknowledge our sequestration are completely insufficient... As such, we need to recognise sequestration – through soils, crops and trees – due to our on-farm systems," says NFF President David Crombie.

Mr Crombie also calls for a change to the Kyoto rules, "de-linking" natural causes of emissions, such as droughts and bushfires. This was one of the reasons given in the Government's recent Green Paper for leaving Agriculture out of the Emissions Trading Scheme. Calling for changes to Kyoto was previously considered an outlandish demand when the Carbon Coalition made similar demands.
"This linkage (under Article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol) is unrealistic and would see Australia bear disproportionate risks, to the extent that Australia would not sign-up to that particular clause," says Mr Crombie.