Food & Farming

“The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.

The chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that there was no justification whatsoever for including emissions from farm animals in any carbon emissions tax scheme.

“Every intelligent farmer can understand the carbon food cycle whereby every bit of carbon dioxide released by farm animals or plants into the atmosphere has previously been removed from the same atmosphere.”

“This simple process is surely not beyond the understanding of all the lobbyists, bureaucrats, researchers and media living off farmers?”

“In the farm sector carbon balance, apart from any fossil fuel used, it is a zero sum game, and all farm animals have zero net carbon emissions.”

“Grazing animals have not yet learned to live on coal or diesel fuel, and they cannot create carbon out of rocks, soil or water. Therefore they must extract it, via grasses and grains, from that marvellous gas of life in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide. All foods and organic matter represent carbon that has been sequestered by life processes into living matter. The carbon is simply recycled at zero cost.”

“Farm plants and animals are every bit as green as forests. Both farms and forests extract carbon from the air and store it in organic life forms until that organic matter is burnt or decays in the open air, thus returning their borrowed carbon to the atmospheric storehouse.”

“Why then do those who grow forests attract a carbon credit and but those who grow cattle and sheep cop a carbon tax?”

“Australia and New Zealand lead the world in harvesting solar energy and carbon dioxide to produce an abundance of clean green food. Why then are both the New Zealand and the Australian governments proposing to force farm animals into their emissions trading quagmire? And why are they subsidising the conversion of farmland producing food into forests producing nothing but carbon credits or crops producing ethanol motor fuel? What are future generations going to eat?”

Forbes claimed that farmers need to start agitating now or they risk being the only bunnies still paying carbon taxes.

“Motorists who vote and use petrol will escape the carbon tax by sleight of hand – petrol excise will in future be called “carbon tax”. Exporters will get an exemption to enable them to compete with more sensible regimes with no carbon taxes. Other protected species like working families in marginal electorates will get subsidies to cover carbon taxes on electricity bills. Truckies will blockade the roads if politicians add carbon tax to diesel prices. That leaves farmers as the only big group with so few votes and such incompetent leadership that they will pay the carbon tax.”

“Farmers have been abandoned by Ag Force, the Meat and Livestock Authority, CSIRO, the National Party, our “working families” Government and most of the similar organisations in New Zealand. It is not clear whether this is because of a lack of scientific logic or cowardice in the face of electoral hysteria on global warming.”

“But the politicians representing the treasured “working families” in the battling suburbs had better start taking notice of rising food prices or a more soundly based hysteria about the growing shortage of food will sweep emissions trading nonsense from the political landscape.”

Viv Forbes, BScApp, FAusIMM, FSIA
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition
www.carbon-sense.com

The current global food “crisis” is not so much a consequence of natural resource constraints as it is a consequence of poor food policy decisions by government. That’s the headline in an article by Mick Keogh, Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, published on Monday by On Line Opinion.

I tend to agree with Mick.

The bottom line is that governments in Europe and North America, as Mick explains, have very actively discouraged agricultural production over recent decades by converting arable land into conservation areas. According to Mick, the USA has 16 million hectares of crop land (almost two thirds of Australia’s total crop area) in Conservation Reserve.

In Australia, the bans on tree clearing, but in particular the purchase of water allocation from irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin, is going to significantly impact on our potential to produce food in the longer term. Indeed while the Murray Darling Basin has historically received only 6 percent of Australia’s annual rainfall, it has produced 40 percent of Australia’s food. This is where we have concentrated the national investment in water infrastructure.

Mick suggests that the imminent introduction of greenhouse emission mitigation policies in Australia and New Zealand also has the potential to adversely impact global agricultural capacity by converting agricultural land to permanent carbon sink forests.

I thought this had already occurred to some existent in Australia, with the bans on broad scale tree clearing in our rangelands? But Mick is perhaps referring to new Blue Gum and pine plantations. Does anyone have any figures on areas likely to be converted from agriculture to this type of forestry?

Mick also mentions the lack of investment in agricultural research and development, government policies mandating the use of food crops for fuel production and policies that restrict trade.

At the Genetically Modified Crops Summit in Melbourne last week Dr TJ Higgins from CSIRO Plant Industries suggested there was a place for both organic and GM food crops including by using organic methods to cultivate superior varieties breed through the application of biotechnology. He made particular reference to subsistence farming systems in Africa. It was a thought provoking presentation, but unfortunately I don’t have a copy of it or link to it.

Science writer Katie Bird writing in ‘Food USA’ has suggested something very similar. She has written: “The war between the GM and organic movements has been bitterly fought. However in the midst of a global food crisis the time has come for these old enemies to bury their differences and concentrate on the benefits an alliance may bring. With increasing food prices and an estimated 854 million undernourished people worldwide (FAO 2006 estimates), debate is raging over how to feed the world’s growing population. The debate is, however, unhealthily polarised.”

Read more here: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=85348-gm-organic-food-security

The issue of rising input costs in conventional farming systems, particularly the cost of fertilizer, was reported by Financial Post reporter Sean Silcoff in a recent article entitled ‘The hungry planet: Is fertilizer the ‘most important business on Earth?’.

Read more here: http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=537032&p=1

There is much for food for thought in both articles – particularly if you consider the value of combining a superior plant variety with an organic method of production in parts of the world where farmers can’t afford much in the way of inputs.