ETS & agriculture
How would an ETS affect agriculture in the global marketplace?
Agriculture is the second largest emitter of green house gases (GHGs) – mostly methane (livestock), nitrous oxide (fertiliser) and CO2 (farm machinery, burning).
Now that agriculture has been fully excluded from coverage of ETS obligations, AgForce maintains its position that agriculture must have made available to it – through sequestration opportunities – the position to capture its emissions.
The United States, United Kingdom, Canada and countries across Europe have already ruled out covering their direct agricultural emissions under a cap and trade system. AgForce believes a level playing field is a minimum requirement for any Australian emissions trading scheme regarding the treatment of agriculture.
AgForce believe in light of the international policy frameworks the Australian Government must eliminate agriculture from CPRS coverage - which it now has done - and adopt an alternate but consistent approach of providing farmers with incentive-based means of reducing emissions. This would be predominately through the availability of offsets through carbon capture and storage.
Including agriculture in the scheme would share the costs across a greater proportion of the economy, but because producers are price takers, the impact would make farming uneconomical.
The agricultural industry also argues that because emissions such as methane are natural processes it is unequitable to compare farming emissions with those from heavy industry and mining. Also, due to the biological nature of farming emissions it is currently impossible to measure and verify them.
Agriculture's resource security has increasingly come under significant threat from Federal and State Government policies influenced by these international forums, particularly during the last decade.
If society wants the safest food in the world, which Australian food is, then society needs to ensure farmers have access to the necessary land on which to produce it and are not hobbled by unviable policies such as the CPRS.
It must also be recognised that agricultural systems will be more impacted by climate change than any other sector, regardless of policy framework.
Agriculture is the second largest emitter of green house gases (GHGs) – mostly methane (livestock), nitrous oxide (fertiliser) and CO2 (farm machinery, burning).
Now that agriculture has been fully excluded from coverage of ETS obligations, AgForce maintains its position that agriculture must have made available to it – through sequestration opportunities – the position to capture its emissions.
The United States, United Kingdom, Canada and countries across Europe have already ruled out covering their direct agricultural emissions under a cap and trade system. AgForce believes a level playing field is a minimum requirement for any Australian emissions trading scheme regarding the treatment of agriculture.
AgForce believe in light of the international policy frameworks the Australian Government must eliminate agriculture from CPRS coverage - which it now has done - and adopt an alternate but consistent approach of providing farmers with incentive-based means of reducing emissions. This would be predominately through the availability of offsets through carbon capture and storage.
Including agriculture in the scheme would share the costs across a greater proportion of the economy, but because producers are price takers, the impact would make farming uneconomical.
The agricultural industry also argues that because emissions such as methane are natural processes it is unequitable to compare farming emissions with those from heavy industry and mining. Also, due to the biological nature of farming emissions it is currently impossible to measure and verify them.
Agriculture's resource security has increasingly come under significant threat from Federal and State Government policies influenced by these international forums, particularly during the last decade.
If society wants the safest food in the world, which Australian food is, then society needs to ensure farmers have access to the necessary land on which to produce it and are not hobbled by unviable policies such as the CPRS.
It must also be recognised that agricultural systems will be more impacted by climate change than any other sector, regardless of policy framework.