Hi all,

With every man and his dog responding to Garnaut, please find below our response to the key elements for agriculture. Please contact me if you would like to follow up.

-          The Garnaut report highlights the risk to agriculture of climate change. Farmers have long acknowledged that risk and continually stressed the need to manage it for many years. Having reinforced it today, Garnaut illustrates the critical importance of any Australian ETS reflecting Australian priorities and interests.

-          Garnaut emphasises that the solution should be global. We agree. We must avoid agricultural production being cut from an emission efficient country, like Australia, and being driven overseas simply because our international trading partners do not face the same restraints we do.

-          Garnaut spells out that agriculture cannot be covered at this time. We recognise the obstacles and agree. Importantly, Garnaut does not suggest an arbitrary timeframe for coverage, but draws attention to the major problems regarding measuring agricultural emissions and the costs associated in monitoring and verifying those emissions across some 155,000 Australian farms. However, he concludes that we must examine alternatives that can deliver greater reductions to emissions, at lower costs, while agriculture is uncovered. These need to be incentive-driven and developed in conjunction with the farm sector.

-          Professor Garnaut notes: “... food is an essential consumer good and climate change will most likely make food production more difficult. Producers will need to adapt to climate change and this adaptation will require significant additional resources.” This highlights the critical need for R&D to underpin agriculture’s adaption to climate change and in reducing net emissions.

-          The report acknowledges that regional areas may bear higher costs and that Australia’s policy response must take account of that reality with regarding to the ETS.

-          The report highlights that the international accounting rules are problematic. NFF asserts that the Kyoto accounting rules do not allow our farm systems to be fully accounted for. Meaning, much of the good work our farmers do in reducing emissions and sequestering carbon in soil and crops, will not be counted as part of Australia’s carbon inventory.

As such, Australia’s ETS must be framed to reflect Australian priorities and interests. Any Australian ETS must be geared to taking full account of agriculture’s total carbon profile.

Cheers,

Brett Heffernan

General Manager - Public Affairs

National Farmers' Federation

PO Box E10

Kingston  ACT  2604

T: (02) 6273 3855

M: 0408 448 250

W: www.nff.org.au

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