Climate, Land, and People
The Soil Carbon Solution
Michael & Louisa Kiely
Carbon Farmers of Australia
Carbon Coalition
Carbon
Farming
Conventional
Farming
MISSION:
To see soil carbon traded
and farmers paid for what
they grow.
Soil Carbon
On The National Agenda
PM Kevin Rudd
4 March 2008
“I am hearing more and
more about the possible
potential of enhancing the
carbon stored in our
soils… [The Government
will] investigate how
better soil management
can be part of Australia’s
response to climate
change.”
FINAL REPORT
“Soil Carbon must be in!”
Professor Ross Garnaut
“Australia is well positioned to
further increase carbon dioxide
removal by soil, due to the sheer
size of its land mass and the
ability of its farming sector to
adopt new management practices.
FINAL REPORT
“Soil Carbon - DON’T WAIT!”
Professor Ross Garnaut
“The mitigation gains are
potentially so large that it is
important for Australia to
commence work on
program design and
implementation even before
the issues of coverage,
national and international,
are fully resolved.”
FINAL REPORT
Australian Soil Carbon:
$12billion/year
Professor Ross Garnaut
Garnaut Report estimates our soils can
sequester 600m t/CO2e/yr - worth up to
$12 billion to Australian farmers.
Cropping lands: annual removal
potential 68m tonnes CO2e on 38
million hectares –1.7 tonnes CO2e/ha
(or 0.5 tC/ha)
$20/tonne CO2e, ‘carbon farmer’ on
500ha could earn extra $18,000 pa
The slow, silent disaster downunder
Murray-Darling Basin - 1 million hectares
Massive depopulation
Corporates buying up distressed farm enterprises
Putting them under forests.
Bringing in Managers.
Family farming disintegrating.
Declined 10% in 5 years to 2006.
Stronger Rural Communities
Healthy Farm Families
Healthy Profit
Healthy ecology
Soil Carbon
Credits
Biodiversity
Soil Fertility
Reduced Salination
Better Water Use
Improved Soil Structure
Less Erosion
Increase Soil Carbon
The Benefits of Soil Carbon Credits
SOIL’S UNIQUE
ROLE
To Hold the Line?
To Aborb the Legacy
Load.
If we stopped emitting
CO2 today?
“Legacy Load” of CO2
If we stopped emitting today…
Chair of IPCC*
Rajendra
Pachauri
Sir David King
Britain’s Chief Scientist
“The carbon dioxide
that’s in our
atmosphere today –
even if we were to
stop emitting it
tomorrow – would live
for many decades,
centuries and
beyond...”
AGO
March 2005
Professor Ross Garnaut
February 2008
Dr Susan Solomon
U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
*Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Neither
“Clean Coal”
Nor
Nuclear Power
Nor
Solar Energy
Nor
Wind Turbines
Nor
Lightbulbs
can remove the
“Legacy Load”
of CO2.
ONLY
PHOTOSYNTHESIS
AT MASSIVE
CAPACITY
AT FULL
DEPLOYMENT
AND SIGNIFICANT
CRITICAL MASS
CAN TACKLE THE LEGACY LOAD
Forests Kill Communities
• Forests march across the countryside
• Sucking the children out of the schools…
• the family incomes out of the local
economy …
• and the heart out of rural communities.
• Tax breaks for forests
• No soil credits for farmers
• Governments depopulating rural areas.
Making Carbon
Biological activity
in soil is
stimulated by
rootmass activity
which feeds
microbe
communities and
generates soil
carbon.
The Cities Beneath Our Feet
“Earthworms ‘glaze’ the passageways they create
with a nutrient rich and microbial active slime layer
that greatly enhances water holding capacity and soil
structure…
“Earthworms and many soil arthropods also shred
organic matter, grazing on the microorganisms
present, then excreting the nutrients in a plant
available form. Together, all these small channels
and pores serve as reservoirs and a transportation
network for air, water, nutrients, roots, and
organisms.”
-Danny Blank
CARBON FARMING
Growing Carbon
•
•
•
•
Ecological Context
Portfolio approach
Broad Church
Sequester Carbon KPI
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Grazing Management
No-Till Cropping
Cover Cropping
Pasture Cropping
Biologicial Farming
Deep-rooted Perennials
Biodynamics
Keyline/SubSoiling
Natural Sequence Farming
Mulching
Probiotics
Compost Teas
Organic Farming
Grassy Woodlands
Carbon Coalition
Council Member
Col Seis
•Pasture cropping
•Time controlled
grazing
Central West NSW
From 2% to 4%
over 10 years
(0.2%C/yr)
More Evidence
• Queensland cropper (ASCAS)
– 149 tonnes of carbon/ha under native vegetation versus 516
tonnes of carbon/ha under adjacent crop.
• WA Dept Ag trials
– 5t-10tCO2e/Ha/yr average
• Central West NSW trial (DECC)
– 2% to 5.5% in 2 years
• Nth Qld
– 1% increase in 2 years in many trials
Potential Value Soil Carbon
INCREASE Carbon 1% (Bulk Density 1.2 and 30cms
depth)
= 42 tonnes C per hectare* = 154 tonnes CO2e
At $5/tonne = $770/Ha
At $25/tonne = $3,850/Ha
Emerging Trading Systems
•
Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme
– Trials WA, SA, VIC, QLD (20Ha Plots)
– Direct Measurement/Full Value
– Paying 1/100th/year
•
Carbon Farmers of Australia
– Trading CCX style
– $50/Ha/yr
– 0.55tC/Ha/yr on change land management
•
CarbonLink (RCS)
– High $$$$ promised
– Complicated system
•
Prime Carbon (Townsville)
– 2 year contracts
– Probiotics (beneficial microbes)
– Credits ‘registered’ with National Environment Registry
Regional Business Model for Carbon Trading
Restored
Farm Ecology
Big Emitters
Recycled
Biomass
Sustainable Farming
Biofuels
Community
Wind Farms
Community
Education/
Involvement
Employment
Carbon Farmers of Australia Market Mechanism
Database*
Aggregator
Australian
Voluntary
Soil
Carbon
Standard
Carbon
Exchang
es
Brokers
*Web-based system for tracking environmental counters across a large group.
Corporate
Market
The Soil Carbon Trading
Debate in Australia
Paradigm Clash in Climate
Change Agriculture
Soil Carbon’s Fatal Flaws
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Soils too old to grow carbon
Science proves soils low sequestration potential
Soil C difficult to measure
Costs of trading too high for farmers
Costs of measurement too high
Flux uncertainties unmanageable
Trade to hard to manage for individual farmer
Farmers net emitters
Cost too much in N inputs to create humus
Bush fires and drought make 3.4 coverage liability
too high for Australia
Soil Carbon’s Fatal Flaws
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Soils too old to grow carbon
Science proves soils low sequestration potential
Soil C difficult to measure
Costs of trading too high for farmers
Costs of measurement too high
Trade to hard to manage for individual farmer
Farmers net emitters
Cost too much in N inputs to create humus
Bush fires and drought make 3.4 coverage liability too high for
Australia
Too Old
• Australian Greenhouse Office CRC on Greenhouse Accounting,
2000 :
• “Australian climate, soils and agricultural management histories
are significantly different to those of developed countries in the
northern hemisphere. These differences generally result in
considerably less potential for increase in soil carbon stocks
associated with changing crop or pasture management
practices in Australia compared with northern temperate
regions.”
Too Old
• Australian Greenhouse Office policy
framework document 2002: “Typically
Australian soils have a poor capacity to store
large quantities of carbon."
• Australian Farm Institute 2007: "The bulk of
Australian farms may not operate as carbon
sinks, due to the age of the soils."
Too Old
• Grains Council of Australia 2007: “Given the age and
degraded nature of Australian cropping soils and the
‘natural’ low levels of organic carbon, there is no
scientific evidence to suggest that there is a real
possibility that organic carbon levels can be
increased by cropping or farming practices at
anything other than slow rates, reaching an
equilibrium point well below that of northern
hemisphere soils.”
• Grains Council of Australia 2008: “Our soils are very
old, very fragile, very thin, very weathered. Often we
are running soils with 1% or less carbon.”
Too Old
Department Climate Change & Water (ex-AGO) 2008
“Green Paper” On Emissions Trading Scheme
Too Old
ｷ“Soil Age is not a factor in carbon sequestration.
It is misleading to say it is.”
Professor
Alex
McBratney, Sydney University
ｷ“We can put back all the soil carbon we have
lost and then even add some more.” We can
recover the average 25 tonnes per Ha of soil
carbon lost since 1770. Dr K Yin Chan, Principal
Research Scientist (Soils), NSW Department of Primary
Industries
Dr KY Chan
Science proves low potential
Science proves low potential
• Methodological flaws in Research program for National Carbon
Accounting System (NCAS)
- gaps in the data
- unjustified conclusions.
- paired sites unrepresentative of modern land management
• No ‘carbon farming’ practices included in the official studies
• Most studies reviewed pre 1981
Science proves low potential
• Authors warned against relying on conclusions
• Consultant hired to assess the data sources concerned:
“considerable deficiencies in the completeness of the
data…”
• AGO: “Development of the NCAS was undertaken with the
clear understanding that data would be imperfect…’
• No scientific studies have yet tested the potential of Australian soils to
sequester carbon.
Difficult to Measure
•
•
•
•
Mantra
Soil carbon is not hard to measure.
Issue is not measurement.
Issue is deciding how to agree on the amount of carbon
that a piece of land holds.
• Framing the Question: “For what purpose are we
measuring?”
– Scientific Research
– Offsetting Emissions
Difficult to Measure
• “For what purpose?”
• Why purchase a tonne of sequestered CO2e?
• Would the buyers’ objective be achieved if Buyer A got
1.25 tonnes and Buyer B got .75 tonnes?
• Between them they removed 2 tonnes CO2e
• A buyer of offsets is is part of an aggregated pool of
buyers who buy an ‘aggregated tonne’ from a large
‘aggregated pool’ of tonnes.
• Tonnes have been ‘equalised’ ie., flux is statistically
‘compressed’
• The significant variations at individual tonne level are
eliminated by statistical smoothing.
Difficult to Measure
• We need not worry about how much carbon
is sequestered on an individual paddock
– o estimates at an individual level may be flawed
– o error has ‘typical statistical properties’
– o estimating many individual parcels and
aggregating them into a single parcel will improve the
estimate significantly. (Sandor, R. L. & Skees, J.
1999. Creating a market for carbon emissions.
Choices 3rd Quarter, pp 13-17.)
Net Emitters
• Farms are more likely to be net emitters
• Whole of enterprise carbon accounting
• No evidence to support ‘net emitter’
statement.
METHANE
$1 PER COW*
*Dr Richard Eckard, VIC DPI, Uni Melbourne
Costs Too Much To Grow Humus
•
•
•
•
•
•
CSIRO paper: The Hidden Costs of Soil Carbon Sequestration
Commissioned /published by Grains Council
Uses 50 year old paper
Claims that N, P, and S tied up with C in humus “locked up”
N costs too much because it must be applied (fertilizer)
Makes C-trade uneconomic
• Ignores biological sources of N, P, S
• Free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria and symbiotic fungi make
available vast amounts of N, P, and S locked up in the soil after
years of over-application of fertilisers.
Costs Too Much To Grow Humus
• CSIRO Fact Sheet says:
– current amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied per year 100
Megatons
– nitrogen addition through nitrogen fixation up to 200
Megatons
• "Rhizobium bacteria ... can fix 100kg of nitrogen per
hectare per year.” (NSW DPI)
• Australian soils holding $10 billion phosphorus
(fertiliser applications). CSIRO 1998
Soil Carbon Credits Speed
Conservation Farming Uptake
Number of Adopters of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two
Iowa Communities
300
250
Cumulative
200
number of
farmers
150
100
50
19
27
19
28
19
29
19
30
19
31
19
32
19
33
19
34
19
35
19
36
19
37
19
38
19
39
19
40
19
41
0
Year
Source: Based on Ryan and Gross (1943)
The Bell Curve of Adoption
2.5%
13.5%
34%
34%
16%
Innovators
Early
Early
Adopters Majority
Late
Majority
Laggards
Source: Rogers
Right incentive speeds
behaviour change
The Carbon Communicators
•
“You single-handedly barnstormed the issue
onto the National agenda. It doesn’t get better
than that!”
– Matt Cawood, Senior Writer, The Land
– www.carboncoalition.com.au
– http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com
– http://envirofarming.blogspot.com
•
•
•
•
Soil Carbon Consulting
Carbon Communications
Climate Change in Agriculture Advisory
Climate Change in Agriculture Advocacy