SQ Landscapes carbon survey closing soon

The natural resource management group has been inviting a diverse range of farmers, land managers and First Nations custodians to take part in hour-long face-to-face or Zoom interviews to ascertain what they believe and have experienced about carbon farming.

Project manager Jayne Thorpe explained that it was part of an Agrifutures Australia project to explore what barriers there are on the ground to carbon farming, and how that could be addressed.

Shires covered by SQ Landscapes' footprint have borne much of the load of Australia's emissions reduction target, and Paroo, Quilpie and Murweh councils have been critical of the economic and social impacts that have resulted.

Ms Thorpe said that to date, all the research undertaken has been from a scientist's perspective.

"As a not-for-profit, community-owned organisation, if we are serious about helping people consider whether carbon farming is right for their land, we need to understand what currently works and what are the hurdles to implementing carbon capture and storage," she said. "What we're looking for is how people experience the various plans when they try to implement them."

The results are set to fill an important gap in knowledge, to put alongside the science and public policy.

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Applicants, who can be managing everything from vineyards to feedlots, be irrigating or dryland cropping, running goats or dairy cattle, and everything in between, must come from the SQL area and must have actively researched the possible application of carbon farming for their land.

They can have decided that carbon farming either is or isn't right for their land, or be undecided.

Ms Thorpe said they'd had a really great response so far and intended to close the opportunity for interviews at the end of October.

"Everything will be confidential - responses will be pooled to get a concept of the breadth and diversity of opinions,to present back to Agrifutures," she said. "It will be a little while before we can get a sense of what people are thinking."

According to a July 2019 Agrifutures paper called Improving Carbon Markets to Increase Farmer Participation by Andrew Macintosh, Geoff Roberts and Sarah Buchan, agriculture accounted for more than 70 per cent of projects registered with the Emissions Reduction Fund.

Although carbon credits were just outside the top 50 Australian agricultural products by farm gate value, the uptake of carbon offset projects across the agriculture sector had been inconsistent, the paper said.

"Most of the uptake has involved the regeneration or protection of native forests on grazing lands in semi-arid regions of Queensland, New South Wales and, to a lesser extent, Western Australia and South Australia.

"The uptake in other areas and of other project types has been limited, with the exception of savannah burning projects in northern Australia."

They identified 17 potential barriers, covering both demand and supply-side issues.

For sequestration projects, barriers included low carbon prices; the risk of rule changes affecting participation and crediting; uncertainty about future carbon prices; difficulties in getting third party consents; permanence requirements; lack of awareness among farmers of carbon market opportunities; the scope of methods; and a lack of trust on behalf of farmers in parties offering carbon market information.

For agriculture emissions avoidance projects, eight key barriers were identified - scope of methods; risk of rule changes governing eligibility and crediting; third party consents; low carbon prices; conservative methods; uncertainty about future carbon prices; lack of trust in information providers; and lack of awareness of carbon market opportunities.

It said further research was warranted to inform the design and implementation of policy responses.

"In particular, more information is needed on the extent of the information barriers across the agricultural sector and the nature and importance of the barriers in different parts of the industry.

"In seeking to mitigate the barriers to the uptake of agricultural abatement activities, policy-makers should be mindful of the developments in other jurisdictions and carbon markets.

"This research has demonstrated the benefits of exploring how similar issues have been addressed in other carbon offset schemes. Australia also has many learnings to share with emerging markets."

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