As we all know, the Federal government has locked Australia into reducing carbon emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels.

What most readers probably don’t appreciate is this target was made easy by a deal done by the Howard government by including any reduction in land clearing and native forest logging which immediately halved the effort needed to reach the target. 

Putting aside the fact that the land clearing was already banned back in the 1980’s and the state governments were busy ending old growth logging in an attempt to buy Green votes, both were included as an offset, making the job of achieving the 2030 target relatively easy.

Only now we import timber from the jungles of Borneo, but no one seems to have picked up on the hypocrisy of saving our trees only to import timber from another country, or the fact that the bans on clearing have prevented more trees being planted in 5:1 offsets as farmers realign paddocks.

Adding to the easy emission reductions has been the closing of coal fired power stations and the building of vastly expensive and unreliable wind and solar power farms, not to mention the sale of the odd Tesla to the Teals.  Together we should make the the 43 per cent target with ease.

The hard part starts post 2030, when we commence the long march down to net zero by 2050, when we can apparently look forward to being an impoverished renewables superpower wondering why the rest of the world is laughing at us.

The thing that should be worrying farmers is not just the fact that the government has claimed the credit (and credits) for itself of not allowing landholders to clear land to help make the 2030 target, but they are now banking on farmers burying the emissions of the rest of the nation in their soil to help reach the unachievable 2050 target.

You may recall, recently, there was much talk about the benefits of carbon farming from a former Minister who had deluded visions of saving the planet through ever growing soil carbon levels.

Her solution was for farmers to follow the advice of the mad unscientific guru of alternative farming methods, the reed whistler Charles Massey.

In this fantasy world, not only would the grain and livestock grow bountifully with half the fertiliser input and no glyphosate but the weather gods would look more kindly on Western Australia and climate change would be stopped in its tracks. 

Only problem was neither former Minister MacTiernan nor Massey could ever produce the trial results to prove the promises that capturing and holding vast amounts of carbon in our hot dry soils was anything more than wishful thinking.

Unfortunately, while most farmers ignored the M and M madness, they are not able to ignore the growing push by sections of the federal Labor government and their activist departments to extract emissions reductions from agriculture by ultimately compelling farmers to capture carbon in their soils.

This is the great risk that farmers face with the looming federal government’s Agricultural and Land Sectoral Plan, which is due to be finalised mid-2024.

This plan is the blueprint that invites industry to tell the government what they are going to do to help the nation achieve the carbon reduction targets the federal government has promised the world.

Think about that for a minute.  The government sets a target and then they invite industry to explain what they are going to do to ensure the government can look good at its next global carbon talkfest.

In our case it’s what are we going to do to not only turn around the 13 per cent of emissions that come from agriculture to achieve net zero, but also how much of every other sector’s carbon emissions we going to bury in our soil to help them out.

Problem is agriculture’s emissions are going up and not down and most farmers are more interested in hanging onto their soil carbon credits for the inevitable day when a carbon tax is imposed on agriculture.

What most of the elites in Canberra don’t appreciate is the fact that Australian agriculture’s total production is growing and it’s growing at an ever-faster pace.  Over the past 30 years it has averaged 3.8 per cent a year, rising to 4.0 per cent for the last 20 years and 4.8 per cent over the past decade.

Every year we are producing more and more meat, grain, fruit, vegetables, wool, wood and cotton from each hectare, but more production means more carbon emissions. 

Hence, the potential to achieve emissions reductions along with the wider goals of hitting the agriculture industry’s $100 billion target by 2030, or feeding a domestic population that is expected to grow to 30 million by 2030, maintaining food diversity, (wagyu with wine rather than bread and water), improving farm productivity and retaining the family farm, all without markets that are prepared to pay a cent more for carbon credits or carbon neutral produce is, to be polite, extremely low.

Funny enough the government does not want to talk about the fact that outside electricity generation every other sector is producing more and more carbon emissions.

Hence it defies common sense to think that we can have a growing economy, growing exports, growing imports, a growing standard of living and a growing population and not have growing emissions.

Talk of green hydrogen and shutting down our two biggest exports – coal and gas – plus switching to 100 per cent renewables being the way to Nirvana is akin to the great delusion that captured the communists over 100 years ago that the market and private property can be replaced with collective ownership of the means of production.

The realists out there know we will never meet the much harder 2050 target without sending Australia to Argentinian levels of poverty, where average incomes are just $300 a month, just as they know that China, India, Africa, South America, Russia etc have no intention of committing economic suicide and will continue to play the game of signing and ignoring global agreements. 

Outside of switching to biofuels and renewable energy, there is little the big emitters, the mining and petroleum companies, airlines, trucking, power stations etc can do to reduce their emissions, so they are left with one option and that is to buy carbon credits.

And who is apparently sitting on the biggest bucket of potential credits … farmers and graziers.

This is where the government sees landholders using their capital (land) to save politicians from their stupid promises. 

To understand this current government’s thinking, you only have to look at the questions they put to the industry in their recent consultation paper as they finalise their grand plan for agriculture.

Apparently “achieving the Paris goals is in Australia’s long term interests (read politicians interests) and will ensure a profitable future for our producers and land managers (read wishful thinking)“.

The paper goes on to say, the “Australian government is developing a net zero plan, to outline how we can transition our economy by 2050.  Agriculture and the land will have an important role to play in helping Australia to transition to a net zero economy. A strong economically efficient, global effort to reduce emissions is in the interest of Australian producers and land managers.” 

To start with, good luck with the “global effort”.  What’s the plan if the rest of the globe does not follow, which by all indications is the case?

Mind you, you can forget asking that question, as the true believers amongst the Greens, Teals and progressive class can’t possibly fathom a world where the peasants (you and me) aren’t panicked into action by the climate catastrophists.

Let’s look at some of the questions they posed in their recent call for submissions paper, along with my answers.

What are the opportunities to reduce emissions and build carbon stores in agriculture and the land?

Unlimited if the government follows the Soviet path and nationalises all the farms; production will soon collapse and with it, carbon emissions.

What are the main barriers to action?

Governments failure to come up with the right economic incentives.

How can we progress emissions reduction efforts whilst also building resilience and adapting to climate change?

You can’t unless farmers have the right economic incentives.

What are the most important options to be further adopted or supported, looking in the short and the longer-term?

Economic incentives, anything from accelerated depreciation to production subsidies.

What are the practical solutions to increase uptake?

Increase economic incentives.

How do you see the agriculture and land sectors contributing over the medium and longer term?

Emissions will go down with the right incentives, emissions will go up with the current economic incentives, agricultural production and emissions will go down with carbon taxes.

How can the Australian Government better support agriculture and land sectors to drive innovation, build capacity and ensure the system enables emissions reductions?

Economic incentives.

What new initiatives could the Australian Government design that would support emissions reduction and carbon storage?

Accelerated depreciation or

• Subsidies for carbon neutral produce;
• Subsidies for biofuel production from grain;
• Subsidies for feed supplements;
• Subsidies for carbon neutral fertilisers;
• Subsidies for destocking;
• Subsidies to moving to new genetics;
• Subsidies for higher ACCUs;
• Subsidies to buy new energy efficient farm machinery;
• Subsidies to decommission older generation farm machinery.

You get the drift. Without carbon credits increasing markedly in value from their current low $32 to around the EUs $110 there is little incentive for farmers to commit to changing farming practices to capture carbon and help the government towards its 2050 target.

The alternative is massive subsidies or tax deductions from the Federal government to incentivise farmers to reduce their emissions or move to produce carbon neutral grain, livestock etc, something that is highly unlikely to happen considering the government’s fiscal problems.

Of course, there is another option and that is to see the 70,000 Australian farmers and graziers, who oversee 427 million hectares, through the eyes of a communist and force them to reduce their emissions via a carbon tax along with laws that mandate they all sign up to carbon farming by setting minimum soil carbon levels. Reminds me of what the Soviets did to the Ukraine peasant free farmers in the 1930s – 5 million died under forced collectivisation and grain transfers.

Think it won’t happen then go ask a New Zealand or Dutch farmer how far mad governments are prepared to go when the elites are captured by the new climate religion.

If this government can shut the live export trade down on the back of claims by a few activists that the trade has lost its social licence, it’s only a matter of time before the climate activists and their friends in parliament come demanding farmers have lost their social licence to operate unless they participate in carbon farming.

In the meantime, don’t sign up to any soil carbon contract until you are sure you won’t need those credits yourself when the inevitable carbon taxes arrive.