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In the Prime of Life on Land, Carbon Matters Most

“Australia has a long history in agriculture,” points out Ken Bellamy. “That history is paralleled with declines in soil carbon. Basically, there is a dire lack of the stuff that makes soil, soil.”  Bellamy is the director of Prime Carbon, a company which has been pioneering a program to help farmers increase the carbon in their soils while creating tradable carbon credits. Read More

Journalist Graham Readfearn writes this article expressly for abc carbon express.

Carbon sequestration in soil was the subject of a research report by sustainability analyst group Connection Research in late 2009. Their report canvassed the opinions of 85 scientists, farmers and other specialists in the area. The key finding of the report was a strong belief in the validity of the technology and its enormous potential in Australia.

Environment Business Australia (EBA) already has set up the Bio-CCS Group to develop soil carbon and biosequestration projects to draw “legacy” carbon from the atmosphere and to use CO2 emissions as feedstock for biodiesel.

In the Prime of Life on Land, Carbon Matters Most

Graham Readfearn, writing expressly for abc carbon express

In most Australian power stations, the source of the power is coal. In most Australian cars, the fuel is most likely another notorious carbon-heavy fossil fuel, namely oil.

And so in the same way that carbon fuels our lives, carbon in soil is the fuel that makes the food that we eat, grow.

“Australia has a long history in agriculture,” points out Ken Bellamy. “That history is paralleled with declines in soil carbon. Basically, there is a dire lack of the stuff that makes soil, soil.”

Ken Bellamy is the director of Prime Carbon, a company which has been pioneering a program to help farmers increase the carbon in their soils while creating tradable carbon credits.

Both metaphorically and literally, it has been a task which has entailed no shortage of digging, sometimes deeply, into the emerging world of international carbon trading and climate change policy.

“The problem I had, and still have, is that there was no-one else in this field,’’ he says.  “There was just nobody doing what we are doing all the way through.  And with no market, there were no precedents or rules to follow.”

Research has found that in the first 20 years of Australian soil cropping, approximately 1,000 million tonnes of CO2 were released into the atmosphere.

Bellamy likens the issue of declining soil carbon to driving a car constantly “with the escalator to the floor”.

But why is the amount of carbon in soil such an important issue?

“Firstly you can’t manage the moisture efficiently. The soil structure becomes more and more like sand or more and more like rock. It doesn’t process nutrients for you,” says Bellamy.

Dr Jeffrey Baldock, of CSIRO Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, has been researching soil carbon and nitrogen for 20 years.

“From a biological point of view, soil carbon provides the energy that all soil-bound organisms feed off,’’ he says. “It’s the fuel. It’s also a large sink of nutrients – it actually holds on to them.’’

Without a good share of carbon, Dr Baldock explains, it becomes harder for soil to hang on to nutrients, nitrogen and the moisture which are all needed for plant growth.

“Australian soils on the whole tend to be lower in carbon content than other in other areas,” he explains.

“Generally soils have higher water holding capacity as soil carbon goes up and that can be very important if you are in a lower rainfall region.

“If we are moving towards a climate that’s warmer and drier then the ability of soil to hold more water could be very critical.’’

He says there are ways to cut down on the loss of soil carbon, such as reducing the depth and frequency of tillage in areas which have good rainfall. However, he says, reducing tillage might not be as effective in retaining soil carbon in places with lower rainfall.

Bellamy says that in some areas the loss of soil carbon has become so acute that when farmers add nitrogen to their crops some 80 per cent of it is lost either through evaporation or run off.

Nitrogen use in agriculture is a major source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, which according to the US Environmental Protection Agency “is about 310 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period.”

Prime Carbon’s role with farmers works in two ways. The first is to design a plan which farmers can use to change the way they manage their soil.

These could include reducing fertiliser use, cutting down on the frequency and depth of ploughing (tillage) and adding carbon-rich catalysts and bio-fertilisers.

Bellamy says: “Farmers recognise that it’s money in the bank if their farm in the wheat belt has sufficient water retention to get a crop every year rather than one good crop every eight “If you talk to a farmer they are professional – they’ll say if their soil is crap but the quality of their soil is their main asset and they know when the quality is coming up.”

At the same time as helping to improve carbon content, Prime Carbon also arranges for soils to be independently lab-tested to get a baseline level of carbon – a process which is repeated regularly over five years, after which farmers could be eligible to create carbon credits that could be sold in a marketplace.

Bellamy has been working with more than 30 farmers across Australia, including wheat and grape growers in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Barley and cattle farmers in central New South Wales, fruit and vegetable growers in Queensland and cattle and wheat farmers in Western Australia.

However, only seven of those farms have signed agreements to enhance their soils under methods devised by Prime Carbon. The rest have been given advice for free.

Due to the minimum five-year term needed before a carbon credit can be created, Prime Carbon has been responsible for less than 1000 tonnes of C02e (or 1000 credits) being sold so far with approximately 10,000 tonnes being registered.

Earlier this year, Prime Carbon accepted a heavy wrap on the knuckles from the ACCC over words used on draft marketing material which Bellamy says was sent to just four people. The brochure also appeared online.

The draft brochure incorrectly stated that Prime Carbon was registered as a broker with the National Stock Exchange (NSX), an exchange that lists small to medium-sized business and not to be confused with the Australian Securities Exchange.

In fact, Prime Carbon was registered as a broker with an organisation called the National Environment Registry (NER), a wholly-owned subsidiary of NSX.

Bellamy regrets the transgression, however minor it may seem, but the incident highlights the challenges faced when any business attempts to forge its way into an emerging market place.

In Queensland, the potential for reducing the state’s emissions from improving the carbon content in soils was laid out in a State Government-commissioned CSIRO report published last year.

Between 2010 and 2050 in Queensland alone, CSIRO research has found an extra 400,000 tonnes of CO2-e could be sequestered each year by improving soil carbon on cropped land.

The report said that while it was relatively easy to implement these improvements, soil carbon measures were more difficult to fit into national or international carbon accounting frameworks.

Last month (April 2010) the Rudd Government announced it was shelving plans for a compulsory carbon market in Australia until at least 2013.

However, in the world’s voluntary and compulsory markets soil carbon is already recognised as a definitive source of emissions reductions and carbon credits.

Methods such as those carried out by Prime Carbon will also be included in Australia’s new National Carbon Offset Standard which will come into effect in June.

CSIRO’s Dr Baldock adds: “An important aspect that will define how this goes will be the relative value of carbon against other commodities being produced.

Farmers are paid to take carbon away – crops capture carbon and grows and that then goes out the farm gate.’’

According to Dr Baldock, the amount of carbon is soils in the future could come down to economics as well as farm practices.

Farmers will have to decide how much to invest in retaining carbon in their soil against the price of nutrients or water.

“If soil carbon, or carbon in general, reached $200 per tonne then you might see a totally different agricultural face. But farmers do understand the link between productivity and soil carbon.’’

Footnote:

Carbon sequestration in soil was the subject of a research report by sustainability analyst group Connection Research in late 2009. Their report canvassed the opinions of 85 scientists, farmers and other specialists in the area. The key finding of the report was a strong belief in the validity of the technology and its enormous potential in Australia. But this was tempered by extreme scepticism on government’s role, and doubts over effective measurement and verification. The report is available from Connection Research (www.connectionresearch.com.au).

Environment Business Australia (EBA) already has the Bio-CCS Group developing soil carbon and biosequestration projects to draw “legacy” carbon from the atmosphere and to use CO2 emissions as feedstock for biodiesel. Its founding members include:

MBD Energy -  www.mbdenergy.com

Ignite Energy Resources/LawrieCo – www.igniteer.com & www.lawrieco.com.au

Soil Carbon – www.soilcarbon.com.au

Plantstone Technology – www.plantstone.com.au

Ocean Nourishment  – www.oceannourishment.com

Environment Business Australia – www.environmentbusiness.com.au

Source: www.abccarbon.com and  www.primecarbon.com.au