Carbon farming: Agriculture could reach net-zero emissions by 2040

Carbon farming as been championed as a win-win for farmers and the environment and a new report shows just how big the wins could be.

Carbon farming could help agriculture get to net-zero by 2040, a new report says.

Australian farmers could reach net-zero emissions by 2040, while pocketing up to $43 billion extra income for themselves, a new report has found.

The analysis, released today by Farmers for Climate Action, shows agriculture can achieve net-zero within the coming decades without reducing herd sizes, if the right support and investment is in place to meet the growing demand for climate action.

It prompted a call from FCA for the Federal Government to expand its agriculture stewardship package – which will see farmers rewarded for planting more trees and increasing biodiversity on their land – more investment in reducing methane emissions, and greater emission cuts from the transport and energy sectors to balance the efforts of the ag sector.

“Much of what needs to be happening – planting trees and ground cover on nonproductive land and within productive systems, adopting best-practice grazing management – is already underway. We just need to scale it up,” FCA chief executive Fiona Davis said.

The agriculture sector contributed about 15 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. The National Farmers’ Federation backs a net-zero emissions goal, and would welcome ecosystem services such as carbon farming to equal 5 per cent of farm revenues.

But modelling from today’s report, by consultancy firm EY, shows that a conservative approach to emissions reduction – based on current adoption rates, abatement costs and available technologies, and without reducing herd size – will see ag reach that goal by 2040, if global warming is limited to 1.5-2 degrees.

The sector could get there even faster with greater investment and uptake.

The analysis also shows that income from carbon-related projects could be between $34.4 billion and $43 billion within the same period, and support between 23,350 and 46,700 jobs.

The price of inaction, however, could mean a loss of ag production due to climate events of at least $5 billion annually; while Europe’s plan to introduce carbon tariffs from 2023 on countries it deems to be not doing enough on climate change could be replicated by other nations and threaten Australia’s ag exports.

Ms Davis said farmers would likely plant carbon and biodiversity crops on unproductive parts of their farms, which would leave the more productive sections for more lucrative crops – but stressed dictating to farmers what they should or should not grow “would be foolish”.

“Farming families should be able to diversify to use their land to grow profitable, productive carbon and biodiversity crops which provide them rare droughtproof payments when and where they choose,” she said.