Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

May I first thank members from both sides of this chamber. This is one of the first MPIs I have seen where both sides have supported the issue, and I hope that this will be reflected in the broader nature of the issue of climate change. I have the view that agriculture can make a contribution in terms of some of the difficulties we may face in the future but that an emissions-trading scheme will need bipartisan support for it to be successful. I do not mean that as criticism of the opposition or of the government; I think there is an onus on all of us to give way where we can to try to reach a consensus. If we end up with a politicised debate on an emissions-trading scheme, where short-term advantage is taken and we lose sight of the longer term advantages that could be achieved, we will do the Australian public a great disservice. I am encouraged that all members have risen today to support a matter of public importance discussion on climate change and the role that agriculture can play. Hopefully, the government, in particular, will pick up on some of the issues.

The issues I would like to raise, if I could, relate particularly to the current debate that is encapsulated by climate change but also to agriculture, drought—and I was pleased to listen to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the shadow minister talking about drought policy and some of the initiatives being taken there—the production of food, the potential production of fuel, where we are going to gain our energy sources from in the future and what sort of carbon footprint or other footprint will be incurred by some of those activities. Overlying that is the whole debate on climate change, which a lot of people encapsulate in terms of carbon emissions. But it is not only about carbon emissions; it is also about nitrous oxide, methane and other greenhouse warming impacts.

I would like to use an example of what is happening with agriculture at the moment. I use the Walgett wheat grower as an example—and some members may have heard part of this story before. Currently, the Walgett wheat grower and other wheat growers—and the minister has seen some of these people—have made a massive adaptation to climate change in some of their cropping systems. The existence of no-till farming in some of the better farming areas, for instance, has effectively produced about 150 to 200 millimetres of moisture available for the cropping cycle. In my own area—and, I know, in the Darling Downs, where the member for Groom comes from—there have been record sorghum crops this year, essentially based on that technology, in what has been a very dry time.

The capacity for farmers to adapt to some of the climate change characteristics is enormous and has been shown in the past, but there is a need for government to participate in the future in encouraging those people, whether through drought policy or other policies such as emissions-trading schemes or land stewardship payments. There are a whole range of initiatives that are potentially out there to assist in driving agriculture in a more positive direction. The minister would have seen some of the perennial pasture techniques that are out there now, where there have been quite massive gains in humus and organic matter in the soil and the impact those techniques have on the moisture infiltration and productivity of those pastures. The  no-till cropping system that I mentioned a moment ago also has an impact—the potential to drought-proof those particular farms. There are also advantages that accrue in the build-up of soil carbon. As I am sure most members know, humus and organic matter in the soil profile is stored carbon; it is sequestered carbon. There is some debate about measurement and whether you can enter carbon trades based on the current measurement systems, but there is no debate that humus and organic matter can be accumulated in soils. That is the major issue that I would like to talk to today.

The Walgett wheat grower has a no-till farming system that has come in in the last 20 years, so his potential, the non-disturbance of his soil, the capacity to reduce wind and water erosion, the capacity to get more moisture into the soil when it does rain and the capacity to store that soil moisture have all been massive adaptations to climate change and should be shown as examples, particularly in other dryland farming areas of the world, particularly Africa. The Walgett wheat grower will have a carbon footprint on his property, reduced because he does not cultivate his land anymore, and by not cultivating he is not releasing some of the available soil carbon into the atmosphere. He is making a positive contribution in that sense. He will have another carbon footprint from getting his wheat from the Walgett silo, via a train hopefully—there has been some discussion about that into the future—to the port of Newcastle, which is a distance of about 500 kilometres. The grain will have another carbon footprint when it leaves our shores and heads for, say, the Middle East. On board that ship will be another carbon footprint, based on the carbon held in the starch of the grain.

We send it over there only because we produce 80 per cent too much. Some would suggest that we have a moral obligation to feed the world. I would just like to assure people that Australia in a good year produces 1.75 per cent of the world’s grain. We do not have the capacity to feed the world. We are a small player when it comes to grain. That is in a good year. The Sudan, on the other hand—100 million acres of Walgett style country with Walgett style rainfall, at war and with a starving population—has the capacity to produce six times that which Australia produces in a good year. It could produce 10 per cent of the world’s grain. We are doing essentially nothing, or very little, to assist those people to provide their own food stock. One of the arguments that I put to those people who raise this ‘food versus fuel’ argument is: have a look at how we can help these people feed themselves rather than sending boatloads of carbon all over the world and then expecting the First World to pay for those carbon footprints.

So the boat arrives in Egypt and we take the money from that, and then we move down to another part of the Middle East and we buy another boatload of oil and we bring it back. It will have a carbon footprint across the ocean. It will get to Newcastle without another one. It will not go by train because that does not happen anymore, so the biggest carbon footprint will occur as it goes out by truck. It will have another carbon footprint on a whole range of activities along the way. The Walgett wheat grower will go around again and produce surplus grain, and the cycle repeats itself.

What is all that going to mean in an emissions-trading system? I do not know the answer to that, but I think it is important that the role of agriculture in that sense is incorporated in any emissions-trading system. Even though it may not be brought in in the first blush, it really has to be factored at some stage into the negative and positive contributions that it would make. There are a number of things that could happen to the Walgett wheat grower. He may decide to grow fuel instead of food, to convert starch in his grain into biofuel—the member for Kennedy has been very involved in some of these initiatives as well—where the by-product is distillers grain, which is a high-protein residue that can be used as a food stock, mainly fed to livestock in feedlots. He may use another process, called anaerobic digestion, which produces biogas, electricity and nitrogen. So, with the anaerobic digestion process, in a sense—and this is happening in Canada and other parts of the world—you can have a semiclosed system. As part of that process—and in Canada they are doing this at this very moment—the carbon dioxide that is emitted from those plants is being reinjected into a hothouse environment to grow vegetables at a quicker rate. So this argument that it is just food versus fuel is a nonsense. There can be a whole range of positives.

The other positive that accrues from the things that I have discussed is the fact that there is a positive carbon impact not only in removing some of the transport shifts—and transport and fuel will have to be in it—but also through the production of a renewable fuel, such as ethanol and biodiesel, which should have a positive impact, particularly under those techniques of no-tillage farming. But the other policy initiative that has to be considered is that there may well be a further step—it relates to land-use policy, it relates to drought again and it relates to nitrogen use and a whole range of other things. If the Walgett farmer decides to change his land use to growing a perennial crop rather than an annual crop—they are starting to do this in the United States through the use of switchgrass, which was the original prairie grass across the United States before they ploughed it up to grow corn—then a number of things will happen. The potential to grow more fuel from that particular plant is much greater than from grain, the carbon footprint is much less because it is a perennial—it is there to be harvested every year; it does not have to be planted, harvested, carted, put on boats and shifted around—and you can produce cellulosic ethanol from that sort of plant. But the other benefit, other than those above-soil carbon advantages, is the capacity of a deep-rooted plant such as that to sequester carbon at depth, as well as all of the erosion and other environmental impacts that people may like to talk about.

I thank all of the speakers for participating in this; I really want this to be an honest debate about a real issue rather than a political debate about who’s who in the zoo. The point I would really like to leave the House with today, and the point I raised with the Prime Minister about three weeks or a month ago now when I met with him on this and other issues, is that there are people out there across Australia—in Emerald, in Western Australia, in New South Wales, in Victoria and in South Australia—who are doing their own carbon-monitoring work to look at this measurement problem. I challenged the Prime Minister, and I do it again to the House now, to fund these people, the innovators in agriculture, and provide measurement campaigns with those people, so if they are getting the numbers wrong, if what they are saying is not correct, it can be easily proven. What is happening is that CSIRO and other institutions are basing their measurements and the capacity to measure on old-style farming techniques, not the newer cropping techniques and some of the newer pasture system techniques. I encourage the government, and I am pleased the minister is here, to look at this issue. I know there is funding particularly for cellulosic ethanol in the budget, but look at this issue of measurement. If we go into an emissions-trading system and we do not know what contribution agriculture can potentially make—not just through sequestration in trees but sequestration in our soils—we really will not know what charges to lay off against the major emitters if there is a more natural way of looking at the problem.

I am sure the minister is aware that, outside of the ocean, most of our carbon is held in our soils—not in our atmosphere; in our soils. We have let a little bit go by burning coal et cetera. Eighty-two per cent of the terrestrial biosphere is in our soils. Most of the work that has been done in carbon trade and carbon management has been about vegetation, has been about trees. Essentially, our scientists have not been focusing on one of the major contributors due to natural sequestration. As soon as they have come to a difficulty in the measurement, they have walked away from it. This is an issue about soil health. A healthy soil is a more productive soil; it is one that holds more moisture. If we are talking about drought policy, Minister, irrespective of whether this whole emissions-trading debate went away tomorrow, which it may do if we are going to get some consensus in this place, we should be looking at sequestering carbon in our soils much more thoroughly. (Time expired)

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