Lay Of The Land

Soil carbon measurement yields proven benefits for biodiversity and could potentially reward farmers. But it faces resistance from an absolutist green movement. By Nick Cater.

While it would be foolish to judge a movie by its trailer, the Australian-made feature film Rams is looking like a parable for our times. It is a battle between bureaucrats and two honest, hardworking farmers played by Sam Neill and Michael Caton, heavily disguised behind beards.

When inspectors discover a single sick ram they respond by seizing every sheep in the valley. Neill and Caton resist by hiding their breeding stock in their homes, covering their tracks with copious quantities of air freshener.

Let’s hope it ends happily, unlike in real life, when a farmer caught in the sights of the farming police is generally on a hiding to nothing.

Late last year the National Farmers Federation set the laudable goal of increasing the value of farm production from about $60bn a year to $100bn a year by 2030. Good luck. The regulators and their enforcers have other ideas. Their intention is to limit the expansion of farming and, if possible, force it into retreat, turning farmers from food producers into unpaid stewards of native trees and grasses.

The draconian enforcement of public health regulations in the past six months shows what happens when officials are granted sweeping powers and only lightly held to account.

Their arrogance would not have surprised farmers for whom tyrannical bureaucrats empowered by native vegetation legislation have long been a fact of life. Arbitrary judgments, frequently made in city offices using nothing more than aerial photographs, rob farmers of the right to cultivate their land.

Native vegetation rules were put in place in the early 2000s with the best of intentions. Over time, however, they have been weighed down with ever more attachments and the bureaucrats get the last word. Even the smartest, most diligent ministers struggle to keep on top of it, let alone muster the strength to fight back.

The NSW government’s Koala State Environmental Protection Plan shows how easily noble causes can be corrupted. The koala has been a protected species since who knows when. The 10 varieties of trees favoured by the species have long been protected, and protection zones designated.

Now the bureaucrats have declared the protection of not 10 tree varieties but 123. Koala zones have been extended far inland into ­places where if you came across one you’d presume it had been kidnapped.

Koala zones improbably include the Bankwest Stadium and the Warringah Mall.

One might wish the National Party could use its influence to push back against such excesses more adroitly than it does. Yet fighting back against noble causes is a dangerous business, no matter how badly they have been corrupted.

From coronavirus to saving threatened species, absolutism, risk aversion and an absence of proportion are hallmarks of contemporary public policy. The saving of the koala is not just one policy objective among many, but the policy objective for which everything else must be sacrificed.

Ad hoc decisions are made in favour of assumed benefits without reference to the cost to farmers, farm output, export earnings or the cost of food.

These costs are not insubstantial. A 2006 survey of the impact on broadacre farming in NSW conducted by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Research Economics estimated that the median cost of forgone crop development was $156,000 per farm or as high as $1.1bn across central and western NSW alone.

Where does this stop? How much native vegetation must be preserved and where should it be? If governments are not willing to answer those questions, they can hardly complain if the bureaucrats decide that too much native veg is never enough.

There has to be a better way to balance the objectives of a productive and profitable farming sector and the protection of biodiversity, one that doesn’t breach the private property rights of farmers without just compensation.

Surely there must be a less crude way of measuring environmental benefits and encouraging better land management practices than guesstimating the proportion of natural grasses or taking random hectares out of cultivation.

Of course there is. One promising approach was canvassed by Energy Minister Angus Taylor in his National Press Club speech last week: soil carbon measurement. It was a section that received scant coverage by the press gallery, but was welcomed by soil scientists and agronomists who understand these things.

The capacity of soil to store carbon has been appreciated by scientists for years, but has been largely overlooked in the desire to find more exotic ways to prevent the escape of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Soil rich in carbon retains more water, reducing vulnerability to drought ,and is more productive. It is also an intelligent way to increase biodiversity without turning over hectares to scrub.

The challenge up to now has been to find a cheap and accurate way to measure carbon in soil, since the present costs are prohibitive. If the cost could be reduced to $3 a hectare, as Taylor outlined, the benefits for farmers and the environment are potentially enormous.

Carbon sequestered in soil would make a positive contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions for which farmers could be rewarded.

Carbon soil management, sometimes referred to as regenerative agriculture, has proven benefits and has been widely tested.

Yet it remains anathema to the deep green movement, which regards farming as the problem, not solution. Its goal for more than half a century has been to decolonise land put to productive use by humans and return it to the native flora and fauna they consider to be its original owners.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to overcome is the unthinking prejudice against farmers that is rampant in the agricultural bureaucracy. They need reminding that those who have skin in the game generally make the wisest choices.