Good riddance, Additionality

Additionality has disappeared! It was in the first Template For Submission of Methodologies under the Carbon Farming Initiative, but it slipped out somewhere in the second "Interim" template. It was there in 'Section 5: Baseline scenario' - 'Specify the procedures for identifying the baseline scenario most likely to occur in the absence of the ability to generate CFI credits. This may include analysis of financial or other barriers.' Ross Garnaut recommended that it be delisted. We recommended the same. As did others. (IS that 'common practice'?) Additionality is the absurd integrity provision which denies farmers access to offsets if the new land management practice they adopt increases production of vegetation (a co-benefit of soil carbon sequestration) or if several farmers in the district had adopted that change before him (broad adoption is the key to other co-benefits, including landscape regeneration)... based on the absurd proposition that the farmer 'would have done it anyway, so why should they earn offsets for it?' This is based on equally absurd assumptions: 1. 'Farmers automatically adopt management practices that increase production or lower costs.' Carbon Farming techniques, such as grazing management, have been around for 30 years. Why have they not adopted it before? (Perhaps because for most of that time science was 'proving' that it did not work and extension was rubbishing it.) 2. 'Farmers follow the leader when deciding on management practices.' Not when it is a new paradigm that challenges everything they learned from their parents, their teachers and their advisers to date. The suggestion that Additionality should apply to Agriculture could only be made in ignorance of farmer psychology.

Carbon Farmers of Australia makes historic first soil credit sale

The first money changed hands for soil carbon in Australia on the 6th of March, 2007. Samantha Meadmore-Jewel, Organic Food Research and Development Executive for The Lovely Pancakes Restaurant Group, made the first ever purchase of Australian soil credits on the 6th of March when she bought Australian Farm Soil Credits from Carbon Farmers of Australia.

We have since made other sales, but we especially celebrate this first - through our online site http://carbonfarmers.blogspot.com - because it made history. It proved the naysayers wrong. It started the ball rolling towards soil sequestration and struck a blow against global warming... And it has shaken up the market. It has been since the 6th of March that the momentum has been building.


The Pancake Parlour’s plans to use the involvement with soil sequestration have expanded to form a campaign on the subject involving an educational program via the tables of the 10 The Pancake Parlour outlets in Victoria. For parents with small children, colouring sheets with comic strip format explanations for parents on the flip side, feature simple explanations and diagrams introducing difficult topics such as global warming and photosynthesis… they are brilliantly designed.



For the customer who is interested there are web links listed to follow via The Pancake Parlour website if they should wish to also sponsor the Carbon Coalition and a 3 page leaflet of extensive information taken from Dr. Christine Jones’, soil ecology notes with her web address to further get all the information they want. There will be a poster and eventually table cards will be positioned for a short time to further direct the less child oriented customers. This will surely impact the weekly 25,000 customers that visit The Pancake Parlours and spread the word about soil C and Climate Change.

Congratulations Lovely Pancakes. A true leader. Lovely!