Soil carbon deserves credit

OVER THE FENCE: BY JON MORGAN

OPINION: Marlborough farmer Doug Avery has a revealing story about commercial greed and the perception that farmers are made of money.

"One day a young lad working at Dalgety's Blenheim store sold a shovel handle to a customer he did not know. "Who shall I charge that to?" he inquired. "Mr Marfell from Seddon," was the answer. The man left. The lad went to the charge book to write in the entry. To his amazement there were pages of Marfells.

"When he told his boss, the reply was: 'Charge them all'. And so they did. The accounts department was advised not to question any Marfell who refused to pay. Only one challenged their account."

The story must be at least 30 years old, but Mr Avery says it has a present-day moral for farmers: Don't pay what you don't owe.

In his case, it is the way the Government will run the emissions trading scheme that reminds him of that store manager.

In its efforts to keep administration costs down, the Government is proposing to take farmers' share of the scheme from the companies that process a farmer's produce.

In the case of Mr Avery, and all other sheep and beef farmers, it will be based on the weight of meat from their slaughtered animals. He thinks that is unfair. It makes no allowance for the way he, and many others like him, farm, which he maintains emits less greenhouse gases than others and stores more carbon.

There is another reason why it is unfair. It punishes innovation.

Mr Avery has worked out an innovative way to keep farming on drought-prone land.

He suffered six years of drought before hitting on the idea - and credit must also be given here to Lincoln plant scientist Derrick Moot - of grazing his sheep on lucerne.

The result has been a surge in lamb growth, so much so that the lambs take eight to 11 weeks less time to reach market weights and therefore are belching and farting less methane into the atmosphere.

Compared with 1990 - and he has to go back that far to find a drought- free period - when he had 3300 ewes and 900 hoggets, he now has 2200 ewes and 650 hoggets.

But by selectively breeding sheep better able to handle the conditions and by mating hoggets and growing them on lucerne, he produces more lamb meat than in 1990. Lambs finish in 12 to 14 weeks, rather than the 20 to 25 weeks of 1990.

The lucerne - and he has a massive 350 hectares of it - has another benefit. It sends roots deep down into the soil - as much as 10 metres - increasing the soil carbon and its moisture content.

He estimates he has about 5 million plants on a hectare.

"Think of how much biomass we have put under the ground in the last 20 years," he says.

"That's one heap of carbon. Any recognition? None."

The trouble is, soil carbon is not recognised under the Kyoto Agreement that New Zealand has signed up to. If it could be, we would be in credit rather than have a sizeable carbon debt.

Agriculture Minister David Carter has assured Mr Avery that soil carbon is high on the Government's list of topics it wants the newly created alliance of 30 countries searching for ways to reduce and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions to look at.

But Mr Avery wants New Zealand, the country with most to gain, to be leading the research into proving soil carbon is worthy of inclusion in an ETS, rather than waiting for others to give it the nod.

If it is included, it would change the way farmers view such fringe technologies as organics and biological farming, which are based on building up the soil structure.

Mr Avery's use of lucerne, which is a natural fixer of nitrogen, puts him in that category and not surprisingly he is a critic of chemical nitrogen, which he feels mines the soil of nutrients.

He wants the Government to reconsider the way it intends to assess farmers' obligations under the ETS. Why the Government prefers this is obvious. Getting processors to collect the levy will be cheaper than creating an army of bureaucrats to travel the country assessing each farm - that's if an equitable method of assessment can be found.

But Mr Avery's views are shared by many others who feel aggrieved that their efforts to farm efficiently and care for their land are not being rewarded when it comes to this tax. And these farmers are among the best we have. It cannot help the country to have them feeling downhearted.

When agriculture joins the ETS in 2015, taxpayers will pay 90 per cent of farmers' emissions, reducing at 1.5 per cent a year. Mr Avery urges taxpayers not to pay. "The invoice is highly questionable. As a family that has been here since 1842 we are proud to pay our own bills, thanks. And we don't pay money we don't owe."

- © Fairfax NZ News