POLITICAL instability may have caused uncertainties but carbon farming is still set to play a big part in agricultural enterprises, according to Australian Carbon Traders managing director Ben Keough.
Mr Keough, a speaker at the Woolgangi Field Day via Burra last week, said he expected carbon to become a commodity that was integrated into everyday farming systems.
"Interest in carbon farming has been good but the uptake has been low," he said. "Political instability has meant a lot of farmers are cautious."
So far more than 100 farmers had signed-up with ACT, but despite completing up to 15 assessments across the State, none of these were from South Australia.
"We have a couple in SA who are very interested, but there's still a fair bit of work to do," Mr Keough said.
Long-term carbon prices were "impossible" to predict at this stage.
"It's linked to policy," he said. "It's likely there will be a homogenisation of prices – and this will be linked to GDP. But if there are more climate events it's likely there will be tighter demand."
It all came back to policy decisions made by the Federal Government.
"Ultimately we need stability (in the carbon marketplace)," he said. "It also needs to become more accessible. But it's like the chicken and egg – which comes first? To get more farmers we need stability but we won't get stability without more farmers."
Cross-production benefits from implementing carbon farming systems included increased water retention, windbreaks and better resistance to drought.
"Carbon is one of the building blocks of life," Mr Keough said. "Look for opportunities that are there, see carbon as part of a farm business plan and incorporate it into a whole-farm plan. It is still in its infancy but opportunities are there."
Mr Keough said there were already 190 countries signed-up to the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that aimed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
He said domestic policy response in Australia had been to increase the cost of carbon-intensive goods and services to make less carbon-intensive goods and services more competitive. Activities that abated or sequestered carbon in the agricultural sector were also rewarded.
Although agriculture was excluded from the carbon price, farmers were still having to pay because of increased costs for inputs and processing.
"The carbon-farming initiative is voluntary," he said.
"It's not a get-rich-quick scheme – it does take time to turn around ecosystem processes and change embedded farming practices."
Mr Keough said there were two key activities:
• Abatement: To stop greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.
• Sequestration: Taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in vegetation and soils.
But farmers had to prove the change they had made in management to afford this, as well as the cost of monitoring and reporting on this change, he said.
*Full report in Stock Journal, May 16 issue, 2013.
