New strategies needed to re-engage farmers in the space of carbon farming

With more than half of Australia's land area under the custodianship of the agricultural sector, and the industry accounting for about 14 per cent of emissions in Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the industry will no doubt be required to play a significant role in helping to address the issue of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Providing a local farmers' perspective at the Carbon and Farming Conference last Tuesday, WAFarmer's chief executive Trevor Whittington (pictured) said while, quite rightly, there was pressure on farmers to step up to the plate, he estimated less than one per cent of WA's farmers had spent the funds required to calculate the carbon footprint of their businesses.

"If we aren't convincing farmers to do at least the base stuff, then we are doing something very wrong," Mr Whittington said.

"We get told about what's been happening globally and why we need to act - but we haven't quite joined the dots on how to get people engaged."

Lack of premiums

Mr Whittington partly attributed the low participation rates in the carbon farming market to the lack of premiums available for low carbon products.

"You go to marketing conferences on this, and they keep telling you that the world is going to pay us a premium, but we are not seeing a premium," Mr Whittington said.

"In the last big United States survey, the average US person was prepared to pay an additional US43 cents per week to mitigate climate change and they have an average income that is about 25pc higher than Australia.

"So while 35,000 people might go to COP27 (a global conference designed to tackle the issue of climate change), the brutal reality is that the market is not going to pay a premium for farmers to do more and we don't dwell on that long and hard enough - because that drives farmers to change their behaviour."

These sentiments were echoed by EY Partner, climate change and sustainability services, Elizabeth Rose, who cited a study which found 53pc of consumers didn't feel they had enough information to make sustainable purchasing decisions.

"They are wanting to demand products that are safe, sustainable and of high quality but this transition might require consumers to pay higher prices and what we're potentially seeing is there's not necessarily a high desire to pay more for these premium products," Ms Rose said.

Rabobank head of sustainable business development, Crawford Taylor, said while it was "debatable" as to whether farmers would ever receive a premium for low carbon or sustainable products, the key focus needed to be on how Australian farmers ranked in terms of their sustainability credentials when compared to other production regions around the world.

He highlighted Australia's canola exports to the European Union, which accounts for more than 70pc of total exports and is worth more than $2 billion per year, as an example where Australia's broadacre sector had been required to prove itself in order to maintain the lucrative market.

The industry was successful in demonstrating compliance to a revised mandated target of GHG savings for biofuels feedstock entering the EU from January 2018.

"We were benchmarked on our emissions intensity for canola production in Australia and that was one of the key things that allowed us to be able to maintain access against the emissions intensity of European farmers," Mr Crawford said.

Impact on land values

With some of WA's farmland values tripling over the past six to seven years, the effect of long-term carbon contracts on property values is another important aspect the State's farmers need to consider when deciding whether to opt in to carbon farming projects.

"If you are going to put a 25, 50 or 100-year carbon contract on a property, it is going to impact land values and land is a farmer's biggest asset," Mr Whittington said.

With the number of WA farms decreasing to only about 3000 graingrowers, Mr Whittington said farmers were dealing with greater amounts of capital in terms of their land value and estimated the average value of a WA broadacre farm to sit within the vicinity of $20 million.

"Farmers don't like having caveats on their property - anything that puts a restriction on what they can and can't do will impact the value of their land," he said.

"So while the price of carbon credits have gone up, we have got to understand the psychology or linkages between carbon values and land value - because that will be a big driver."

No bank penalties, discounts

The absence of penalties from financial institutions for farmers not implementing carbon farming practices on their properties, as well as the absence of discounts for those farmers "doing the right thing" were also highlighted as other factors which had halted the uptake of carbon farming projects in WA.

"Unless we are going to get Australia to be a good model citizen and do its bit - we are going to have to get vastly more sophisticated in how we get those who own the land, which are the 80,000 farmers across Australia, to plant more trees and change some of their farming practices and measure their soil carbon footprint," Mr Whittington said.

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Highlighting agroforestry as "the biggest, most obvious" opportunity for farmers to participate in carbon farming, he said it was now a matter of applying "some science and some economics" to convince farmers to become involved in those projects.

With climate change a complex and politically charged issue, Ms Rose said there was a natural resistance to change for many, so in order to increase the uptake of carbon farming there also needed to be an understanding that it was indeed a "people issue".

She also highlighted a lack of political will, implementation challenges as well as a lingering uncertainty and scepticism towards the science of decarbonisation as other barriers to the uptake of carbon farming practices by the industry, with many of the conference speakers agreeing that there was a need to build a greater understanding and awareness of how to drive decarbonisation activities within the agricultural sector.