The recently announced Net Zero Plan called out a significant role for land-based sequestration as part of the net zero transition, totalling 119 million tonnes of carbon to be sequestered in the landscape by 2050.
Recent research released today shows that agriculture can continue to grow and landholders benefit while meeting this challenge.
ABARES Executive Director Dr Jared Greenville said the research indicates that achieving the projected land-based sequestration amount will require establishing sequestration projects across approximately 18 million hectares by 2050.
“While this is a significant area of land, these projects are expected to deliver significant benefits to landholders, generating $9 billion of profits to farmers annually by 2050, providing the opportunity for many landholders to diversify into a mix of agriculture and sequestration,” Dr Greenville said.
“About 59% of the land use change would be where farmers combine agriculture and carbon farming.”
While land shifting away from agricultural production will have an impact on agricultural revenue, the reduction will be more than offset by an underlying growth of agricultural production.
“As land-based sequestration projects take place across the landscape between now and 2050, agricultural value is still estimated to grow by 39%, but would be 2% lower than otherwise,” Dr Greenville said
“A growing agricultural sector and increased opportunities for farmers to diversify their incomes shows there will be no threat to Australia’s food security.”
Sequestration projects are likely to be spread across the landscape reflecting different levels of agriculture and carbon sequestration profitability across Australia.
“The impacts on most regional economies are expected to be small, but there may be some places where we are likely to see more change in agricultural production than others,” Dr Greenville said.
“Ensuring that agriculture and regions can continue to thrive and also benefit from land-based sequestration projects will require landholder choice and options for farmers to combine agriculture and carbon farming to help minimise the impact on regions.”
View the Insights paper here: https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/products/insights/sequestration-ag-land-impacts-policy-trade-offs.
