Emissions blame ‘unfairly pinned’ on farmers, WAFarmers calling for carbon captured in crops be calculated

It is high time the carbon captured by crops is acknowledged and used in emissions calculations, according to a leading industry advocate who is sick of people “pinning the blame” for climate change on farmers. WAFarmers grains section president Mic Fels said the sector had been unfairly “lumped in” with the mining sector and the amount of carbon captured in farm produce had been overlooked. In what he dubbed the “most ambitious target of any farming organisation”, he hoped to have a carbon calculator which would factor that in by 2023. “We capture seven times more carbon dioxide than we emit to do it,” Mr Fels said. “They pin all the blame on the farming sector. We’ve been lumped in with the minerals sector, but they’re taking old carbon out of the ground and emitting it, we’re emitting carbon we’ve captured from the air. It’s the opposite of what they’re doing.” To get the ball rolling, WAFarmers Grains has called on the Grains Research and Development Corporation and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to develop an “agreed, accessible carbon calculator” which accounts for the carbon captured in farm produce. “Not by 2050, not by 2030, but by 2023 — in two years time,” Mr Fels said. “All the bureaucratic wrangling since the 1970s Paris agreement, it was conveniently omitted that agriculture is the only major sector that actually captures — through our expense and effort — massive quantities of carbon dioxide from the air and exported in our produce. “Until this is recognised and included in the calculations, we are guaranteed to get policy that is not only bad for farmers, but will drive consumer behaviour that makes the climate problem worse and not better.” He said one of the sector’s biggest sources of emissions was nitrogen or urea, but as it was a “catalyst” for photosynthesis and improved yields, it was a “logical” practice as the more photosynthesis, the more carbon captured. Given the produce is consumed within a year or two of being produced, Mr Fels said it was considered “short-cycle” carbon, but growers were still removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He said awareness needed to be raised that consumers played a role in the process as well. “Farmers are capturing the carbon and consumers are emitting it,” he said. “There’s two parties involved and being held accountable for consumers is skewing the debate around agricultural emissions.” Mr Fels said they were not looking for credits or tax breaks, simply acknowledgement by policymakers. “We just want them to acknowledge, calculate and discuss,” he said. “Don’t just pretend it’s not happening ... and penalise farmers.” At this stage, WAFarmers Grains is “reluctant” to adopt a carbon emissions target due to the “confusion around how net emissions are to be calculated and the possibility that this may be detrimental to Australian agriculture for very little or no benefit to the environment”.