Embracing the climate challenge Written submission by Clr John Ewart Tucker Break O’Day Council This document is in response to the Tasmanian Government’s invitation to make written submissions on Embracing the Climate Challenge (the draft action plan). This document addresses the specific role that the agricultural sector – including the livestock industry – can play in creating carbon sinks on a massive scale. Practical actions The practical actions advocated in this submission are based on a number of factors about the livestock industry and the role it can play in sequestering carbon. The first practical task is to foster an awareness among policy makers, farmers and the community generally, of the positive role that plants and animals can have in drawing down excess carbon from the atmosphere. A second urgent practical task is to unwind some of the misconceptions about how the atmospheric carbon cycle works and the part that herbivores play in it. Carbon sequestration Agriculture – including, specifically, the natural relationship between herbivores and grass lands – has the potential to create a massive carbon sink. Photosynthesis and controlled grazing is a key to this. Agriculture, including the livestock industry, can create this carbon sink in a more permanent form than commonly advocated solutions such as forests and ‘above ground’ carbon sequestration strategies. More and more trees, more and more thick undergrowth and more and more dry dead-fall on our forest floors just cannot be a practical action in long-term storage of carbon. The trees, the dense undergrowth and the dry dead-fall are just waiting for the next fire to take place. They all oxidise straight back to atmospheric carbon dioxide as soon as they are burned. And burning is inevitable in most terrain in Australia if carbon is stored above ground in the open. Worse still is the fact that, from the point of view of global warming gas emissions, and depending on the amount of ‘smouldering’ that takes place during the burn, the organic matter being burned may release a significant amount of methane. The carbon sequestered by managing the natural relationship between herbivores and grasslands is stored in a way that it makes the landscape less susceptible to fire. Carbon sequestered by managing herbivores and grasslands also aids in boosting agricultural productivity and enhancing environmental values. It helps make farming landscapes more resilient to any of the stresses that may come with global warming. Importantly, managing herbivores and grasslands to store carbon underground, is a low carbon input technology that basically relies on the solar energy that arrives in our fields and paddocks every day. It relies on natural and organic cycles such as the atmospheric water cycle and the atmospheric carbon cycle. The energy source for it is solar energy – direct solar energy in the form of photosynthesis in plants. The plants provide the food and energy for the livestock to walk around, graze, and continue growing. Certainly, at the paddock level, there is a very low fossil fuel input into a grazing operation – this differs from most large scale vegetable growing or cereal cropping where there is a significant fossil fuel input in the form of the tractor work required for large scale production. Underground storage of carbon in a non-burnable form, makes more sense than trying to store the same carbon in an above ground form in the highly ‘burnable’ environment of Australia. It makes even Page 1 of 5 more sense if one truly believes that the Australian landscape is to become more fire-prone as a result of climate change. Storage above ground is just not a cogent solution to the need for carbon sinks. Storage below ground is a cogent solution. The marketing success of Cape Grim Beef – an outstanding Tasmanian enterprise – is a case that shows that a grazing enterprise can be, and can have, an entirely ‘clean and green’ enterprise. Showcasing Carbon farmers. There are numerous examples in Australia of farmers and graziers who have successfully created significant carbon sinks in the paddocks by controlling the grazing pattern of herbivores and coordinating this with the growth cycle of grasses. The Tasmanian Government should take steps to showcase these farmers and the results they have achieved at drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. Other practical action. Show casing the work of good carbon farmers, and spreading the news about them, can include such things as; Government sponsored Field Days at relevant farms, Government funded Field Trips to other parts of Australia, arrangement of Visiting Guest Speakers to take the message to all parts of Tasmania and all communities and interest groups, a Tasmania Government Website devoted to issues surrounding carbon farming, Essay Competitions at schools to create students’ awareness of how the atmospheric carbon cycle works, other Extension Programs to highlight the positive role farmers and graziers can play, and the encouragement for people to read books from Australia and overseas about how the relationship between herbivores and grasslands can be managed to sequester vast tonnages of carbon permanently. The Tasmanian Government could actively encourage farmers – and groups of farmers – to engage positively in the Federal Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative. At the same time, the Tasmanian Government needs to take action to correct some of the misinformation about herbivores that is widespread and commonly accepted in the community. Priorities With regard to priorities, the priority over the next five years should be to disseminate the knowledge and awareness of how farmers can help mitigate carbon build-up in the atmosphere. A priority may also be to establish a base-line benchmark of the soil carbon levels of farms in Tasmania – including the farms in Tasmania which are currently involved with the Carbon Farming Initiative. This base-line information can be used to create something like a ‘Tasmania Farm Carbon Sequestration Index’. With a priority to build awareness in the next five years – and get started with sequestration projects – the priority for the following five years (2022 -2027) should be to really strike home in Tasmania to draw down, and sequester, massive amounts of carbon. This is where the idea of a ‘Tasmania Farm Carbon Sequestration Index’ would come into its own in demonstrating the effect of practical action. It would enable the Tasmanian Government to identify the total annual sequestration and the total cumulative tonnage of sequestration over the years. Page 2 of 5 Targets A reasonable target for farmers and graziers is for them, yearly, to draw down more carbon that the State produces. In fact, a good target would be for the Tasmanian Government to be able to show that Tasmania, as a small State, draws down more than its fair share of the Australian national total. Natural advantages Tasmania has large areas of productive grazing land which can be used for this purpose. Conclusion The rather vague recommendations on page 25 of the action plan under the heading ‘Getting our primary industries climate ready’ should be replaced with something more concrete and achievable as outlined in this paper. Specifically, the role of grazing animals to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and make the landscape more resilient to climate stress needs to be recognised and advocated. The beneficial consequence of more soil carbon in creating a higher level of water efficiency also needs to be recognised and advocated. Such is the potential herbivores and grasslands to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as carbon substances in the ground that, when fully realised, good farmers and graziers will come to be seen as the heroes of the environmental movement, not the villains. Additional notes to this submission Where does carbon in plants and animals come from? This is a scientific point of enormous misunderstanding in the community. It needs to be cleared up – partly by Tasmanian Government information campaigns – because it is the basis of various other misconceptions about carbon in the atmosphere. Most people think that the carbon in a plant comes from the ground. It seems intuitively true. They think that the function of the roots is to gather carbon from the ground and form it into trunks, branches, twigs and leaves. This is a common misconception but is utterly false. It is a false conception that then leads, through a series of flawed conclusions, to alarm about the ‘emissions’ of livestock. The reverse position is the case. None of the carbon in a tree or blade of grass comes from the ground – it all comes from the atmosphere by the process of photosynthesis. The roots bring moisture and nutrients from the ground but no carbon. In fact, the carbon at the deepest tip of the deepest root, all comes from the carbon dioxide the plant’s leaves accessed from the atmosphere in photosynthesis. When any animal, including grazing herbivores, eats any food, it is taking in carbon (carbo-hydrates) which originated in the atmosphere. When any animal emits carbon – either as carbon dioxide or as methane – it is returning the same carbon atoms to the atmosphere that were originally drawn down by the plant in photosynthesis. In other words, there are no additional carbon atoms given out to the atmosphere that were not already there before photosynthesis took place. It is impossible for a herbivore to create carbon or give out more carbon than it ever took in from eating a plant. The ‘emissions’ of herbivores is part of a natural, organic, solar powered and self-completing cycle of carbon in the atmosphere. Thus, when the detractors of livestock, cite the carbon emissions, they are Page 3 of 5 only measuring the emissions at one point in the cycle.