SEQUESTRATION A WIN FOR FARMERS
AS COP26 in Glasgow fast approaches we see an increased media focus on achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and what can be achieved by 2030.
While net-zero by 2050 might be a legitimate goal, much of the debate has tended to use it as a slogan in what is a political campaign. The debate is also focused on only one side of the net-zero equation, reducing emissions.
Yet in Australia we have an opportunity to drive outcomes on the other side of the equation, capturing carbon, which is why the government’s recent decision to include soil carbon sequestration as a key element in its net-zero 2050 plan is a positive move. The solution is right under our feet – soil and soil carbon sequestration – Australia has an abundance of soil and soil that has been
depleted of carbon over the past two centuries. At the Mulloon Institute we have a strategy to not only address this issue but in doing so help deliver potentially substantial financial returns for agriculture and farmers.
Since 2018 significant parts of Australia have experienced what Dorothea Mackellar described in her poem My Country as a land of “droughts and flooding rains” and “flood and fire and famine”. No better example of that was at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms, east of Canberra, and straddling the Great Dividing Range. In 2018-19 it experienced the nine driest continuous
months since records started in the late 1800s. That was followed by the disastrous 2019-20 bushfires with the top end of the Mulloon catchment burnt out. Since then, it has had two one-in50-year floods. All reinforcing My Country.
When My Country was published in 1908 Mackellar was not focused on
CO2 emissions and its ramifications on climate. She was recording what she experienced. We now have similar experiences albeit arguably more intensive.
But Mackellar also wrote “green tangle of the brushes, where lithe lianas coil, and orchids deck the treetops
and ferns the warm dark soil”.
With those words she was experiencing soils rich in carbon and that is something we now have much less of. Scientists estimate we have lost between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of our soil carbon over the past 200 years.
Herein lies the opportunity with a net-zero goal. Unfortunately, much of our farming sector has been spooked into thinking that working toward net-zero will be detrimental to their livelihood.
The opposite is the case. Gary Nairn was a minister in the Howard government and is the chairman of the Mulloon Institute.