Following on from the previous post on this subject, the federal government is slowly releasing guidelines for how carbon farming will work for farmers who also want to derive income from harvesting trees grown in small scale farm forestry plantations.
To satisfy the legal requirement that this type of project makes a contribution to sequestering carbon, it appears that farmers who wish to accrue carbon credits through farm forestry projects will need to maintain an overall constant level of carbon on their land for the 100 year period in the same way that applies to the environmental plantings methodology. Allowances can be made, however, for harvesting a certain amount of timber from the plantation, which will be reflected in the price paid for the verifiable amount of overall carbon sequestered for the 100 year period.
Farmers will be able to choose which species to plant for harvesting and which for long term retention, and it seems clear even at this early stage that there may be advantages in planting trees for carbon that quickly accumulate carbon credits and higher value timber trees for harvesting as a mixed balance in the plantation that is designed to deliver income streams that suit the farmer’s long term goals. The number of variations will be as vast as the number of farms. There are really good opportunities in the long term for tree growing to contribute to farm income, perhaps not solely through carbon credits, but in combination with high grade furniture quality timber harvesting.
It is a problem, however, that it is not particularly easy to find government information on these topics, many people who have an interest in carbon farming are rightly disappointed in the lack of political leadership and continuing uncertainty in this area. The Liberal-National Coalition does not offer a lot of positive hope for the future either, with its policies focussed mostly on the short term goal of repealing the carbon tax and a lot of confusion about the workability and budget implications of its direct action plans.
As mentioned in the previous post, a lot of the groundwork has been done by the parliament under the Gillard government to create these opportunities for the rural sector. If Australia moves rapidly to adopting the international floating price as has been signalled by the Rudd government, increasing participation and intervention in carbon policy by USA and China is likely to exert upward pressure on carbon prices.
The current low price may continue to discourage mass participation by many farmers for the time being while Australia’s mainstream parties fail to provide leadership on the issue but, like any market, there will be those who understand early that growing trees is the only proven way of withdrawing carbon from the atmosphere. Nature has been doing it for hundreds of millions of years, and future generations need a liveable planet to be passed on to them. Combining farm diversification with a small amount of idealism and inter-generational equity is a fairly modest goal, but it is best to set realistic targets.
Carbon farming is only one aspect of the global approach that is needed to address the enormous implications of climate change. Given that the sacrifices needed to adapt to a radically different climate will become greater as global temperature rises and droughts bite harder, farmers are in a unique position to make a relatively painless contribution to the effort. This is the idea behind carbon farming. Markets are generally based on participants who are motivated by self interest, but the carbon farming market is different in that its goal is to use natural processes such as photosynthesis to keep the planetary atmosphere in a condition that gives hope to those who come after us. The financial aspects of carbon trading provide the framework for investors to realise returns on investments in carbon sequestration. Like all markets, prices can vary depending on demand and the carbon market in Europe has clearly been distorted by the amount of free permits given to polluters who have flooded the market with them. As the market matures, free permits will be phased out and more genuine price signals will occur.
In the meantime, many farmers are already interested in growing trees for shelter, amenity, biodiversity, superannuation and timber, so carbon sequestration simply adds another reason.
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