KALANNIE farmer Ian Stanley has been planting trees long before his involvement in Elementree, a company which plants oil mallee trees for carbon sequestration.
As a grain producer Mr Stanley believes growers have to be part of the solution to reducing carbon emissions, not just recognising the problem.
"I've always had the thought that one day what might make planting trees profitable was their ability to store carbon, they were never going to be that profitable just with landcare, so we hoped the trees we planted may pay their way," he said.
"The world is going to put a price on carbon. People and industries who are going to make a living out of emitting carbon into the atmosphere are going to be encouraged to change practices one way or another.
"For those industries in the short or medium term, the cheapest way of doing that is to plant a tree or buy a tree and store some carbon and offset their emissions."
But Mr Stanley said politics made the situation more complicated than it needed to be.
"Agriculture is an emitter and we need to spin around and say 'look it's going to cost us six per cent'," he said.
"If we think that's a big number, it's because we are a big emitter.
"We have to get real, we can't sit back and say 'it's not fair on agriculture so let's not make them pay it."
