Biodiversity to offset carbon credits

Farmers may soon be rewarded more for environmental stewardship than short-term emission control measures, according to a key government adviser.

Farmers will likely be rewarded more for environmental stewardship than short-term emission control measures in coming years, and by 2030 “we won’t be talking carbon credits for agriculture anymore”.

Instead, the discussion will be on biodiversity credits, University of Melbourne sustainable agriculture professor Richard Eckard says, with carbon “just the first cab off the rank”.

“The big one coming is biodiversity and that will be much more valuable for farmers,” Prof Eckard, who is a scientific adviser to the Australian, UK and Victorian governments, said.

“By 2030, all the Pauls, Unilevers, Woolworths, Fonterra’s will have supply chain targets and we strongly suspect that they will be placing a higher value on farmers managing biodiversity on behalf of us all than anything else. I don’t see a downside.”

Cattle feeding on pushed Mulga. Picture: David Martinelli.

Under this scenario, the notion of farmers selling carbon credits will essentially disappear as they will only be selling away their own supply chain access.

The federal government’s biodiversity certificates scheme, announced last August, encourages land managers to restore or manage local habitats and invest in carbon offsetting projects to earn biodiversity certificates, that can then be sold to other parties.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the scheme was an opportunity to “support farmers using their knowledge and expertise in a way that benefits us all”.

It is predicted that many areas of high rainfall and good soil currently carrying livestock will transition to crop production by the end of the century, with extensive grazing industries to be the big biodiversity winners.

National Farmers’ Federation president Fiona Simson said linking farmers with environment, social and corporate governance investors would stop farmland being lost to carbon farming in the energy transition.

Professor Eckard said the problem with carbon credits was “we pay the wrong people”.

“If you are already sitting at six per cent soil carbon you have nowhere to go. But if you are three per cent carbon on the same soil, with potential to go to six, we don’t ask why they stuffed up their soil, but we will pay them to get to six,” he said.