Join Southern Farming Systems for three Carbon Farming Outreach Program workshops to be run across South-West Victoria on March 4,6 & 26. These workshops will educate and create awareness of the impact of carbon, its’ emissions in agricultural production systems and how harnessing it may benefit the farm business. A range of topics will be covered, from understanding the mechanics of climate change to using carbon calculators.

The workshops are being run part of the Carbon Farming Outreach Program, in collaboration with Grower Group Alliance, and delivered with funding support from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

Very simply, climate change is caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere which trap heat and are altering our climate patterns. Two of the main GHGs of concern are carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄).

On farm, photosynthesis removes CO₂ from the atmosphere and converts it into products such as grain and meat, and then often gets re-released back to the atmosphere through processes such as respiration. While farmers are inherently ‘farming carbon’, carbon farming aims to capture and store carbon in solid form and keep it sequestered for many years.

Australia is one of 195 countries signatory to The Paris Agreement (2015), aiming to limit average global temperature increases to 2^oC above pre-industrial levels. To help achieve this, Australia has set targets of 43% emissions reduction by 2030, and net zero emissions by 2050.

One of the biggest impacts of this on farmers will be pressure from markets and supply chains seeking products with lower emissions as they aim to meet their own targets. Knowing and being able to provide evidence of on-farm (and pre-farm, Scope 3) emissions, and efforts to reduce them, will be invaluable going forward.

Several tools have been designed to help calculate total GHG emissions and sequestration on a farm level. They are based on farm data such as livestock numbers, grain yields and fertiliser use, as well as algorithms and generic values. These calculators are continually evolving with new data and science, but they can give an indication of farm emissions and their main contributors to emissions. Knowing farm emissions is becoming increasingly important for regulatory compliance and market demand.

Opportunities for reducing livestock emissions largely focus on reducing methane output by animals, which can be done by manipulating the farm, and/or manipulating the animal. Manipulating the farm could be changing the timing of operations or adjusting pastures offered, while manipulating the animal could be through genetics, animal health or diet supplementation. While there are less opportunities to reduce emissions in cropping enterprises, there are some reductions to be made in manipulating the farming system (eg crop rotations, stubble management) or the crop (eg nitrogen use). These changes may come at a cost to productivity and/or profitability which must be weighed up when implementing changes.

Want to learn more? Join us at Tatyoon (4 March), Hamilton (6 March) & Winchelsea (26 March) from 9:00am to 3:00pm to register for the event go to https://sfs.org.au/communications/events

Written by Audrey Gripper, SFS Research & Extension Coordinator