TECHNICAL
Carbon farming intricacies Keith Woodford, honorary Professor of Agri-Food Systems at Lincoln University, has recently written a number of articles comparing the economic returns of planting pine trees on farmland for carbon farming to various livestock farming enterprises. Robin Boom The projected figures show that carbon farming is far more lucrative than the current high returns from sheep and beef and that it is also more lucrative to plant a lot of recently converted dairy farms even at a $9/kg Milk Solids payout, into pine trees, and only intensive dairy farms and horticulture will be able to compete economically with carbon farming. In two short years the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme carbon unit price has more than tripled from $25 to $80 with projections it will shortly exceed $100 per unit.
Article 2 (b) states the goal of “Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production.” As a food producing nation which feeds the equivalent of 40 million people through our food exports it is imperative that any policy implemented on climate change does not affect our food producing ability. Unfortunately these clauses in the Paris Accord seem to be ignored by many of our current crop of politicians.
Recent publicity about Huiarua Station on the East Coast, an iconic 5,000ha property inland of Tolaga Bay, being sold to go into trees for carbon farming has got politicians looking for solutions to the wholesale afforestation of pastoral land. Huiarua Station had been put up for tender in December last year and although there were good offers by livestock farmers, the deep pockets of overseas investors who understand the artificially created opportunity of carbon farming were the deepest.
Almost half of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, largely from enteric methane produced in the rumen of sheep, cattle, goats and deer, but also from nitrous oxide from animal urine and fertiliser nitrogen. Arable and vegetable crop production also produces greenhouse gases from CO2 lost through soil inversion, fallowing and plant desiccation, as well as nitrous oxide from artificial nitrogenous fertilisers. Soil carbon loss can in part be mitigated through the use of composts, manures and biochar, but there will still be CO2 lost into the atmosphere during the cultivation process from microbial decomposition of organic matter, a process which humans have been contributing to for thousands of years since the dawn of agriculture.
Planting land into Pinus radiata, leaving them to absorb CO2 out of the atmosphere for 30 years is easy money with few ongoing expenses. Huiarua Station has huge tracts of cropable and easy rolling country, and for this land to be lost forever, when there will be no net benefit for the local community, seems a tragic loss. When it comes to global climate change, there will be no gain worldwide, as the meat and wool not grown on Huiarua Station will be grown instead in some other country, where the carbon footprint is likely to be considerably higher. New Zealand is known to produce food which has a very low carbon footprint compared to most countries. We were a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and have a duty to fulfil the demands in the Agreement. One of the guiding principles in this agreement is “Recognising the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change.” 58
The ORCHARDIST : APRIL 2022
Soil carbon loss can in part be mitigated through the use of composts, manures and biochar, but there will still be CO2 lost into the atmosphere during the cultivation process Go-to tree Pinus radiata is the go-to tree for carbon farming as it sequesters carbon rapidly due to its rapid growth, grows in a wide variety of conditions, gets close to maximum
