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the australian farmer
MW: We never entered into it. It could be a good method for understanding how to do it and what you have to measure and what some of the limitations are, but I'd only use it as a guideline. TAF: Is there more that farmers could be doing to minimise carbon emissions? Where should our focus be, industry-wise? MW: I think when it comes to climate change, everyone should do what they can do, no matter where they are. If you are an electricity producer and you can produce using renewables going forward, that I think you're honour-bound to do that, so you should be focusing on that, not trying to buy offsets of farmers who don't have those choices. Yeah, we haven't got tools in our toolbox that we can just go and grab as an alternative, because we've got these methane-emitting animals that need to keep emitting methane. So that's my argument: every- one needs to be responsible, and we just can't keep taking coal and gas out of the ground and burning it as we have been doing because it's not sustainable for the climate. Mark Wootton is a pioneer of carbon-neutral farming operating Jigsaw Farms, a 3378-hectare family prop- erty in Western Victoria.
or the same amount of calves is obviously going to be more attractive than the one that needs to eat more. The other thing is selecting for high growth. Carbon’s pretty simple. When that animal dies, it doesn’t pro- duce any more methane, so if you have an animal that finishes a month or two quicker than the norm, your carbon footprint will be lower. The best thing you can do is focus on your genetics, focus on utilising pasture well, focus on best practice in terms of keeping your ground cover. All of those things will mean you'll have a lower carbon footprint, and that’s without doing any offsetting or insetting. You'll also end up with more money – but to be in the green, you’ve got to be in the black first. Ultimately, farmers won't get to carbon zero un- less they do some offsetting or insetting somewhere. But if they don't want to do sequestration, because there's no carbon impact, I would still say make your operation as efficient as you can. You'll make more money and you'll be in a better position if you have to do offsets later on because you'll have a much more fertile and productive system. TAF: What role, if any, does the Integrated Farm and Land Management Method and the ERS exit scheme play in all of this?
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