Allowing agricultural offsets in Australia’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) will provide opportunities and challenges for Australian farmers, delegates at the ABARE Outlook Conference in Canberra were told today in the session on agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Helal Ahammad, General Manager of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) Climate Change and Environment Branch, presented new analysis showing Australian agriculture is likely to benefit from the emissions offsets provision included in the government’s proposed climate change policy.

“The most emissions intensive industries, such as beef cattle and sheep meat, have the most to gain from an agriculture emissions offsets provision,” Dr Ahammad said.

“There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the potential for agriculture to generate emissions offsets, but what is clear is that offsets will provide an additional revenue source for many Australian agricultural producers.”

However, Associate Professor Richard Eckard of the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Department of Primary Industry, warned that global agricultural emissions may still rise despite the implementation of abatement policies.

“To meet the food demands of a growing world population, global agricultural production will need to double by 2050. Australia needs to play a role by increasing agricultural productivity,” said Professor Eckard.

“Sustained investment in abatement technologies for agriculture is required to capture the large potential for future agricultural emissions abatement.”

Dr Kim Ritman, Acting Executive Director of the Bureau of Rural Sciences, also speaking in the session, highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the potential for soil carbon in Australia.

“The storage of soil carbon is all about trade-offs and weighing the benefits and costs at the enterprise level,” Dr Ritman said.

“Increasing the amount of organic soil carbon has the potential to be a win-win for primary producers and for all Australians by reducing greenhouse gases, improving productivity and providing other ecosystem benefits.

“However, more work is required to develop consistent methods for measuring soil carbon and, importantly, to understand the risks from climate variability and climate change on the storage of organic soil carbon”.