South East QLD Farmer Viv Forbes writes:
I am calling on all farmers and those who eat farm products to raise their voices in opposition to the silly proposals of Australian and New Zealand governments to include emissions and motions from farm animals as a taxable carbon emission.
All cows are “green” like the one below when looked at in the right light.
The chairman of Carbon Sense Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that New Zealand has already agreed to include farm animal emissions in their taxable emissions output and Prof Garnaut is also thinking of driving Australian farmers to the Kyoto bail for a similar milching.
We smart farmers in the South Pacific must have the longest cows in the world - they feed on farms in Queensland and Queenstown and are about to be milked in Canberra and Wellington.
Photo below of Viv Forbes taking a break on the farm with a good mate - his Maremma Dog.
I am an animal breeder, pasture manager and soil scientist, and can’t believe the lack of noise from farm groups and consumers on this matter.
Any farmer would know that no cow, sheep, pig or goat has yet managed to create carbon out of nothing. Nor do they eat fossil fuel. Every bit of carbon sequestered in meat, bones, wool and milk, or expelled in solid, liquid or gaseous animal waste, was extracted from the air by the pastures and grain crops the animals ate.
Pastures, crops and soil fungi live on carbon dioxide, the universal plant food from the atmosphere, and water and minerals from the soil. Ultimately, all carbon in the food chain comes from the air (apart from some artificial “foods” made from coal or petroleum derivatives, and very minor soil humus derived from oxidized coal or oil shale).
Photo below of Green Cows taking on Solar Fuel. (These are our Braford breeders on our property at Rosevale.)
This carbon extraction process starts the day the animal is conceived and ceases on the day it dies. This is the carbon food cycle we all live by.
In fact all farm animals should get a carbon credit, because they sequester part of the carbon extracted from the air in bones, meat, milk and wool. Much of this carbon then gets transferred to the bones and flesh of the growing human population, and eventually gets sequestered in sewerage (often, unfortunately, on the sea floor), bones in the coffins, and soil in the cemeteries. This is a proven process which provides more secure and far cheaper carbon sequestration than some of the billion dollar schemes being investigated.
In this respect grazing animals are just like trees; both sequester CO2 for their lifetimes, sometimes much longer.
Photo of Magic Dorper sheep using grass to extract carbon from thin air. (These are our dorper meat sheep.)
Of course other parts of the food chain generate net carbon emissions for agricultural machines, processing, chemicals and transport. Each of these activities would attract its own carbon tax. None are essential elements in the raising of domestic animals - the essentials are soil, water, grass and the atmospheric gases, especially oxygen and carbon dioxide.
No matter how you do the sums, farm animals cause a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Thus they should get a carbon credit, certainly not a carbon tax.
We all know the moon is made of green cheese. It is time to educate politicians that all cows are also green.
Have Your Say!
Should emissions and motions from farm animals be treated as a taxable carbon emission?
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Tags: Emmissions Trading
There should be real concern here.
It is unbelievable that farm organizations, peak bodies, Meat & Livestock Australia remain almost silent on the issue. Still, this is because funding for many of these organizations comes from Government Consolidated Revenue; they will not take a stand that could remove / reduce their funding. How can these people take the money and say they represent farmers??
Farmers own much of the carbon tied up in vegetation and soils in Australia, and because farmer organizations are “tongue tied” the debate is “onesided” and in favour of “government policy” at all times.
Farmers have been carrying the “greenhouse gas” cost burden for the rest of the community for years, with deep rooted pasture development, timber belts and the maintenance of large tracts of native vegetation, including the loss of productive land to “woody weeds”, and they are to be rewarded with another tax/levy.
We all know how Australia was able to say it was complying with the Kyoto protocol, the farmers were carrying the burden at no cost to the community. How then is it possible for most farmers not to be nett removers of carbon from the atmosphere irrespective of the gases animals release through natural digestion.
Hence it the “norm” for governments to try and charge farmers for some greenhouse gas emissions and then not recompense them for other carbon sequestration. Yes, its a fair system we have here.
Yet a coal miner can “unlock” millions of tonnes of carbon, irrespective of who burns the coal and they are doing a great job for the economy, but as usual someone else pays!!
The main missing link from many of the issues impacting farming today is that many will become “extinct” because they just can’t produce food profitably anymore; and at a time when the current world population will need affordable food supplies.
If we have to go down the path of carbon taxes, surely farmers who can sequester more carbon than they release to the environment should be paid an equivalent amount as dictated by the tax on the equivalent emission. Any other process is just another tax/levy and we’ve had a gut full of these, all they fund is a bigger non-productive bureaucracy.
And might I suggest that we consider putting a carbon tax on vegetarians.
Rumour has it, they generate more greenhouse gas than people eating a balanced diet.
I endorse wholeheartedly John Michelmore’s comments.
I remember suggesting at a meeting (at least six years ago) discussing investigating methane emissions from cattle ,that, while they were at it they should also investigate methane emissions from people, particularly vegetarians.
The response from almost all those present were looks consistent with those of a stunned mullet. I now have this nightmare of a whole new bureaucracy (please read the definition of a bureaucrat in a dictionary) imposing taxes, etc.
The cost of administration of these fantasies sending the country broke.
Why isn’t this sort of information making it to the greater public. I remember when Helen Clarke was visiting Mr Beattie last year, it was making second and third story on the evening news about Methane emissions of grazing animals, in particularly cattle.
There has to be some funding available to measure the methane emissions of a vegetarian. Or would the civil libertarians step in and say we are discriminating against Vegetarians. To me, it seems like Agriculture is being discriminated against in a whole range of matters.
So who has what it will take to come out and make the public aware of this, and what resources do we need?
Ross
I agree with what your saying however I think the farming community should gather the research and the people (yes they are out there) and bring a sensible balanced submission to the government.
By this I mean not doing what the “other team/ greenies” are doing, which to me is charging in blind screaming and yelling. I think we are smarter than that. If our government is not willing to listen then there are plenty of starving people in the world to back up our claims. What the Australian Government is doing by ignoring its producers and pandering to extremists is making Aussies look petty and ignorant to the majority of the world.
There are plenty of people doing research on the benefits of agriculture and the health of our population from good farming practice. These people are generally based internationally but they are there. If we can put up a decent submission and address the issue of starving people, and fossil fuel usage then I think we may be on the way to arresting the downslide of our planet.
The problem is it is the green voice that is heard loudest, and in general they are not well rounded and truly informed. I don’t think yelling louder than them is going to work I think we need to stop screaming like five year olds and now talk as adults (if of course the government is willing to come to the table).
This should not be difficult for the farming community but we do need to see integrated support networks within agribusiness. No-one is an island in this!