“Carbon in the soil is money in the bank”
Through understanding nutritional balance and the symbiosis of the animals with plants and soil life we can build carbon in soil of up to 20 tonnes/hectare/year. In Central Western NSW under planned grazing management additional carbon in soil has been tested at 9 tonnes/hectare/year. 78% or 7 tonnes of this carbon has been tested as held in humus, that is long-term, stable carbon deep in the soil. 7 tonnes of carbon( x 3.67 to give CO2 equivalent) equals 25.7 tonnes of CO2/hectare /year sequestered. If this was sold on the international market at conservatively AUD20/tonne, it would be worth $513/ha/yr. (1 t of carbon equals 3.67t of CO2.) (Ref)* Jones, Christine (2007) Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme, www.amazingcarbon.com
From a scientific point of view there is no difficulty in measuring carbon to a high degree of accuracy on a large scale using remote sensing and ground proofing. Several private companies both here and overseas have developed machinery for doing this which will become more available once certainty about crediting is established. The issue is to find a practical standardised measuring system that is reliable, cost effective and internationally recognised.
Carbon forms more chemical compounds than all other elements combined. It is the building block of life. Soil carbon takes three distinct forms: living carbon in the form of microbes, fungi, plant roots, nematodes, earth worms etc; labile carbon comprising decomposing (dead) plant and animal material that is in a state of transition; and fixed carbon consisting of stable compounds as humates and glomalins.
Sequestered Carbon comprises the fixed carbon plus the total living biomass, however tradeable sequestered carbon is likely to be only fixed stable carbon humates and perhaps glomalins. Fossil Carbon is the remains of living organisms that have become trapped in geological formations in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. The by-product of burning these fossil fuels (mainly carbon dioxide) is accumulating in the atmosphere and oceans and causes global warming. HSA believes that all current and legacy emissions from burning fossil fuels, land clearing and the destruction of soil organisms can be potentially absorbed by plants and sequestered either as living carbon or fixed carbon.
The Gillard Government has recently announced that it intends to put a price on carbon to create a domestic (Australian) carbon market to enable the 750 big Australian emitters, primarily the fossil fuels based energy industry, access to buying domestic credits to offset their emissions, which enables the government to meet their emissions target and balance the National Greenhouse accounts. Legislation which includes the Carbon Farming Initiative is drafted but not passed, and the Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Greg Combet, has made two recent announcements regarding the CFI. Download Summary of Greg Combet's press release[.doc]
The price on carbon is not a carbon tax, as widely referred to in the media, but a trading market where the polluters pay, and the sequesterers and emissions abaters gain.
HSA has made a submission in response to the CFI's (Carbon Farming Initiave of the Department of Climate Change) draft methodology guidelines, focussing on the potential of carbon sequestration in soil, and the ways of verifying the carbon in the soil to gain carbon credits to be traded on the carbon market. Download CFI submission[.doc] CFI credits do not only include credits for soil sequestration, but a raft of other abatement methods, and concentrate on emissions abatement rather then actual sequestration. HSA pointed out in its submission the higher value of actual sequestration of carbon in soil rather than mere emissions abatement, the verifiable act of which is also eligible for carbon credits.
Under the present CFI proposal, any credits issued will have to satisfy integrity principles to make sure that by abating or sequestering, the recipient is not actually emitting more. This means a carbon audit on the business proposing to gain credits, and a methodology of how the business is going to be doing it must be submitted to the Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee (DOIC) set up by the Department of Climate Change. HSA proposes that individual farming businesses can be aggregated and have an agent to do this carbon audit and methodology for them.
Whether the carbon credits created under the CFI can be traded on all four markets (the domestic mandatory, domestic voluntary, the international mandatory under Kyoto rules, and the international voluntary) is not yet clear. At present it seems the CFI credits are being created to trade on the domestic market only. Whether they can be traded internationally, which HSA is lobbying for, is complicated by Australia's not having signed the Marrakesh accords allowing soil carbon trading under Kyoto rules, something the government is apparently aiming to address at the Durban round of climate change talks this year.
Through biological farming, farmers are in the best position to sequester all current CO2 emissions, as well as the legacy load in the atmosphere, thus preventing the global warming of more than 2 degrees by 2050 widely predicted by climate scientists if little action is taken. For farmers to do the work, they need to be paid. As a consequence HSA supports a price on carbon and a soil carbon crediting system which rewards farmers for the quantities of sequestered carbon they produce. HSA also proposes credits be given to farmers for transitioning their land management to biological farming, essentially planned grazing and no till biological cropping, which greatly reduces or eliminates the need for emissions producing and soil carbon burning chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
The CFI envisions funding a comprehensive education rollout on carbon credits and biological farming, providing the means for farmers to inform themselves on the techniques necessary to sequester carbon in their soils.
Carbon sequestered in the soil will likely have to be in the form of stable carbon humates, deeper than 100ml, to satisfy the integrity principles needed for a 100 year universally tradeable viable carbon credit. This is because living carbon cannot be guaranteed to stay in the soil with season variants and the top 100ml of soil is susceptible to fire and drought. Biological farming management techniques mean additional carbon can be sequestered in the soil, deeper and deeper, year after year. Additional carbon measured after an established baseline carbon measurement can be credited, thus enabling income from carbon sequestration for farmers each year.
Buffers for variations in stable humates can be built into either individual methodologies and/or aggregator arrangements. Carbon credits are attached to the person running the business, not the land, and are transferable to new owners and redeemable.
HSA supports the CFI consultation process because it sees crediting soil carbon sequestration as a means to providing a financial incentive for farmers to change their land management practices to sequester carbon, which by definition must mean healthier soils, as a carbon rich soil is full of microbial life making nutrients bio-available. Faster nutrient cycling meaning better plant growth and health, and better soil structure meaning greater hydration of soils.