THREE fears prevent people from making the change to carbon farming - fear of peer ridicule, change and going broke.
That's according to internationally acclaimed scientist and educator Terry McCosker, who spoke at the State government's launch of its second round of funding for the Western Australian Carbon Farming and Land Restoration Program.
Held at Aloft Hotel last Thursday, a group of industry stakeholders heard from Agriculture and Food Minister Alannah MacTiernan, as well as recipients from round one of the program who shared their individual project updates before taking part in a panel discussion on carbon farming.
Round one saw 13 projects share in more than $3.6 million of funding for their carbon farming projects, with 73 farmers also receiving vouchers of up to $10,000 to complete land management strategies to support future applications.
Round two of the funding program has two categories: general vegetation and or soil carbon and a category for soil carbon projects in low rainfall areas and includes a simplified application process for projects under $250,000 to improve accessibility to the scheme.
Forum participants heard from David Martin, who has an integrated biodiversity revegetation at Weelhamby Farm, at Perenjori, which has a strong focus on perennial pastures, pulse grazing and multi-species cropping, as well as David Somerville who has undertaken a biodiversity project at Nannup Truffle Farm.
Mr Somerville said he had been successful in applying for both State and Federal grants to undertake a carbon farming land restoration program on the property, but had only been offered $30,000 from the Federal government compared to a $50,000 grant from the State government (which he accepted), that was repayable in Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) and had an easier compliance regime.
Mr Somerville said the purpose of the project, which utilises 10 hectares of land not suitable for the trufferie, was its non-economic results, with biodiversity and climate change significant points of focus for him personally.
The forum also heard from Josh Mackie, who has been assisting his cousin David Mackie, undertake the Undanooka soil carbon project which involved changing the farm management strategies to increase soil carbon, as well as Boorokup biodiversity project manager Justin Jonson and Wheatbelt NRM saltbush research project manager Richard Harper.
Ms MacTiernan said projects from round one funding had started to hit the ground, with the successful applicants implementing their business plans to take up the opportunity to sequester carbon and secure carbon credits.
"These innovative farmers are paving the way for others to integrate carbon sequestration into their operations, examining options like revegetation and landscape rejuvenation, legume and pasture systems, alternative crop sequencing and new technologies," Ms MacTiernan said.
"Each has a different motivation for embracing carbon projects: dealing with their carbon footprint, to enhance their business by generating carbon credits, improving soil health and mitigating salinity.
"It is very encouraging to see the increasing numbers of farmers wanting to explore these options."
Keynote speaker, Mr McCosker, explained some of the processes for carbon farming and said the market had already started to differentiate between "avoiding carbon emissions" and carbon sequestration, with the latter "putting carbon away" in vegetation and soils.
"The carbon sequestration rate is the rate in tonnes of carbon per hectare per annum that you can add to your soil and, obviously, the price of carbon is also a driver," Mr McCosker said.
"If we were to lower fuel and power usage, we are lowering emissions and coming down the track there will be some carbon credits available for that."
Australian carbon credit units
With one tonne of carbon dioxide equal to one ACCU, once these credits have been accumulated they go into an Australian national registry of emissions units (ANREU) account with the clean energy regulator, where every carbon credit has an electronic signature that provides all of the details of that credit, including whether it's from a soil carbon project, a forestry project or some other form of abatement.
While the ACCU owner can trade or hold onto the credits, there is a trend in the market to de-value "vintage carbon".
"If you hold onto it for too long, it will actually start to de-value... so I would expect one that's more than 10 to 15-years-old or certainly 20-years-old - those credits are certainly being discounted by the market," Mr McCosker said.
Recently conducting research on the value of Australian soil carbon credits, Mr McCosker said over the next few months about 400,000t of soil carbon credits would go to market with the price of those credits in today's market likely to be between $60 and $150/t.
"The reasons for it being so high is because it's sequestration rather than an avoided emission," Mr McCosker said.
"Secondly it involves regenerative agriculture, which is something that the market really enjoys."
Carbon measurement costs
While there are cheaper options available to have your soil carbon levels measured, Mr McCosker said by choosing those options you run the risk of there being variability in your soil sampling, wiping out any potential gains you're likely to make.
"If you have a measurement system with high uncertainty it has a major influence on all the carbon credits you're likely to receive over a 25-year period," he said.
"Spending the money up front and getting particularly that baseline accurately done is quite important."
With the scale of carbon farming projects also a significant factor to their success, Mr McCosker said projects below 1000 hectares had more risks associated with them, however as the price of carbon lifts, so would the viability of small scale projects.
"As the potential price of soil carbon credits near the $100/t, this would start to make 300-500ha carbon farming projects more viable, provided their carbon sequestration rates are also reasonable," he said.
Benefits of storing carbon in soil
By increasing organic carbon in the soils it results in the soils receiving "free nitrogen" and there is also evidence it can lead to decreases in the cost of crop production as well as an increase in crop yields.
"For every tonne of carbon that we add to a soil per hectare, we are going to be adding 80 kilograms of nitrogen to that soil and eventually, there is a lot of evidence around it, as you increase your soil organic carbon there will be no need to put nitrogen fertiliser on your crops as we move forward," Mr McCosker said.
By increasing the organic carbon in soils it increases the soils' cation exchange capacity which is a useful indicator of soil fertility, as it shows the soil's ability to supply three important plant nutrients: calcium, magnesium and potassium.
Citing data from New South Wales, Mr McCosker said the result of a 1 per cent increase in soil organic carbon measured to a 10 centimetre depth, led to the soil circulating more than 1000 kilograms of nitrogen and 220kg of phosphorus.
"Also, as you add carbon to a soil, you're engrossing water holding capacity," he said.
"In round figures if we added a tonne of carbon to a hectare to soil we will be adding the ability to hold 4t of water, which obviously has some production benefits."
Another aspect to consider in carbon farming is that the carbon credits can also be used to offset climate risk and price risk within a business.
"For example, if you have credit stored within your ANREU account and you hit a dry period or a year when you have frost, you can pull those credits out, sell them, and keep your cash flow relatively even," Mr McCosker said.
With most of WA's conventional land management systems set up to manage for chemistry, Mr McCosker said there needed to be a paradigm shift to manage for biology instead.
"We still have access to all of the things that we need, so all the chemicals and fertilisers are still part of moving an ecosystem forward, but maybe we use them in a different way and in different quantities," he said.
"Biodiversity is also critical to increasing the rate of carbon sequestration in a soil and also the soil health itself."
