Associate Professor Matthew Harrison, Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture, University of Tasmania, June 2022
An invited presentation by Associate Professor Matthew Harrison from the University of Tasmania presents a summary of recent research in climate change adaptation and greenhouse gas emissions mitigation for the agriculture sector.
The presentation presents opportunities for a paradigm shift in the way we think about and address our changing climate, including aspects that future research and industry priorities should address.
The presentation includes emissions reduction fund (ERF) policies, outcomes of new on-farm trials with biochar as a feed supplement, and opportunities for combining (or “stacking”) emissions mitigation options.
[Ed: Matt welcomes questions from Australian Rural & Regional News readers. Please send them to TheEditor@ARR.News. Your questions and Matt’s responses will be published here.]
The presentation includes:
1. The Australian livestock industry’s Carbon Neutral 2030 (CN30) Initiative
2. The nexus between productivity, profitability, greenhouse gas emissions and social licence under an increasingly variable climate
3. Regenerative agriculture: implications for ecosystems services, biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions
4. WaterCan Profit: avenues for the irrigated agricultural sector to improve profitability of irrigation water
5. Earth observation and machine learning technologies for remote monitoring of agricultural management at the field (paddock) level
8. Transdisciplinary research programmes involving an array of disciplinary scientists, industry, policy-makers and others
9. The changing climate… or our climate crisis?
10. Reframing the focus to extreme weather events (droughts, heatwaves, extreme rainfall, bushfires) rather than gradual climate change
11. Opportunities associated with the climate crisis (livestock production in Tasmania, dairy production in northern USA, cropping in boreal areas with melting of permafrost regions)
12. On-farm trials with biochar as a livestock feed supplement to reduce enteric methane, improve soil carbon, improve liveweight gain and reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensity
13. “Stacking” (or combining) multiple greenhouse gas emissions interventions (e.g. soil carbon, plantation forestry, beef cattle herd management methods)
14. Effects of climate change on soil carbon sequestration
15. Mitigation opportunities that may be more favourable under future climate change compared with others
16. Soil carbon: management options for improvement, markets and policies
17. The integrated farm management method as a policy instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Australia
18. “Carbon myopia” and the urgent need to consider wider economic, environmental and social co-benefits and trade-offs associated with mitigation or adaptation
19. Prospective avenues for conceptualising, rethinking, applying and improving our systems modelling frameworks
