Australian Rural & Regional News partners with YourFinance.TV to bring you interviews about and relevant to business in rural and regional Australia.
In this first episode of YourFinance.TV‘s Small Steps, Big Impact series, Scott Duxbury from YF.TV discusses the challenges and opportunities in achieving sustainable food production and reducing greenhouse gas emissions with Matthew Harrison, lead author of the research report ‘Clarifying confusions over carbon conclusions’ from the University of Tasmania. The discussion explores strategies such as soil carbon sequestration, regenerative agriculture, and reducing food waste that can help us move towards a more sustainable and equitable food system.
0:00 Introduction
1:22 How can we balance the need for sustainable food production with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?
3:07 What role do irrigated systems play in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through soil organic carbon sequestration?
4:57 How can we reduce the use of nitrogenous fertilizers in intensified agricultural practices while still maintaining high crop yields?
7:14 How important is considering initial soil organic carbon stocks and their influence on long-term trajectories of soil carbon accrual when implementing sustainable farming practices?
9:00 What are some challenges Matt sees in implementing sustainable farming practices, and how can we overcome them?
11:06 Conclusion
Increasing food production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to a changing climate is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.
Professor Matthew Harrison from the University of Tasmania explains that agricultural management practice changes can increase soil carbon and remove atmospheric carbon dioxide, but the extent of carbon removals depends on where you start from. Professor Harrison led a team that studied long term changes in soil carbon under several management options, climates and crop types. They found that around three quarters of the variation in long term changes in soil carbon depended on initial (antecedent) soil carbon: if initial levels were low, changes in soil carbon that ensued were high. If initial levels were high, changes that ensued were low, because soil carbon levels were already close to their ceiling levels.
Professor Harrison suggested that practitioners aspiring to increase soil carbon would do well to first consider how current soil carbon levels compare with ceiling levels for their context, which could be determined by measuring local undisturbed soils with perennial vegetative ground cover.
