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Agricultural think tank, the Australian Farm Institute, says Labor’s carbon farming plan is “a little bit confusing”.
Labor says that, if re-elected, it will spend $46 million to allow farmers to trade carbon credits on the international market.
But the institute’s Mick Keogh says it’s unclear where the money is exactly going to be spent and whether the plan will be recognised in international carbon accounting systems.
Launching the policy, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said farmers could earn about $500 million over ten years.
“To take a simple example, a farmer could choose to plant trees on a marginal piece of land that is not used for other farming purposes,” she says.
“The carbon that is then captured and stored through those trees can be the subject of a carbon credit. And that carbon credit could be traded internationally.”
Murwillumbah sugar cane farmer Robert Quirk says it’s not clear what opportunity Labor’s policy will present for northern NSW sugar co-generation plants, but he says it’ll be worth millions of dollars to the national sugar industry.
“It isn’t worth a lot of money to me. The plant stores are probably less than $1000, but if the NSW industry was to make a claim as a group then it’s closer to a million dollars,” he says.
“If the Australian Industry was to make a claim, it’s closer to $20 million, and it’s some hundreds of millions of dollars if the international sugar industry picks it up.”