Australia’s best carbon farmer is ready to get cracking under the Coalition’s controversial direct action climate change plan. But he says it will need a price on carbon to work properly.
Cam Banks, who runs a 525-hectare grazing property near Uralla on the northern tablelands of New South Wales, appears to have had astonishing results burying carbon in his land.
Independent estimates show his careful management of cattle grazing is capable of sucking down up to 10 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year, largely by stimulating grass growth - far more than the results of experiments run by the CSIRO and other researchers.
Mr Banks and his supporters - who call themselves ”the outliers” because their results seem so far above average - say there is much potential to use their skills on climate change, if the price is right.
”The catalyst they need is a price on carbon and a way to measure it in soil,” Mr Banks said. ”You do need that incentive. It is a carrot, rather than the stick approach.”
The Coalition’s direct action climate change policy is expected to rely heavily on sequestering carbon dioxide in the soil, and it has suggested that it would be willing to pay farmers about $10 per tonne captured.
The storage is achieved by changing land management practices, including rotating grazing times, changing fertilisers, and adding lime to soil - all of which allows more organic matter to build up underground.
The Coalition hopes up to 85 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year could be permanently stored underground.
But most of the serious research work into large-scale soil carbon storage suggests that this is wildly optimistic.
A 2012 CSIRO study suggested that perhaps 1 million tonnes a year would be a realistic rate in the early years of a national soil carbon effort, rising later to higher levels.
The CSIRO’s latest research concludes that the combined effect of soil carbon and changes to forestry management could make a ”small to moderate contribution” to Australia’s effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent by the year 2020.
