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Carbon Credits & Agriculture | |
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| | From AESA Council's Chair
By John Kolk
Poultry Industry Council
The issue of trading carbon credits from agriculture has generated a tangle of views, from soaring hopes for the value of the credits, to debates about whether humans are influencing the global climate. As Canada edges closer to establishing a national emissions trading system, we have to pull what we need out of the tangle so we can focus on making our farms and our industry more economically and environmentally sustainable.
To sort through the tangle, we first need to educate ourselves. For me, attending the recent Carbon Connections conference was one way to do that (see “Gearing up for Greenhouse Gas Offset Trading” in this issue). The conference wasn’t about debating emission policies or the reality of climate change. It was aimed at helping us learn about the practical aspects of commercial trading of carbon credits from agriculture – like how do we build relationships and create deals, how would we cover off risk, how might we amalgamate at the production level, and how do we set value on different credits.
Canada’s emissions trading system still has many unknowns, including what the monetary value of carbon credits might be. However, we do know who the players are going to be: the industries that will be buying credits to reduce their emissions; the aggregators; the people in agriculture who could have credits to sell. The conference brought us all together, and helped us to get to know one another and make some contacts.
One thing I’ve learned in the last few years, and which was reinforced at the conference, is that the returns from carbon credit trading will likely not provide enough of a benefit to put expensive agricultural changes into place. The driver for adoption of new practices will be because they make sense for a farm’s sustainability and viability.
Most “beneficial management practices” have benefits on the greenhouse gas side and they are also practical, cost-effective and good for the natural resources that agriculture relies on. Some examples that come to my mind are: changes to livestock rations to more closely meet nutritional requirements; managing manure so more nitrogen gets to the crop and less is lost to the air; and minimizing tillage to increase soil moisture and reduce fuel costs. Yes, these practices reduce agriculture’s net greenhouse gas emissions, but they offer producers much more than that.
On my own family’s farm, we’re going to continue making changes that make good economic and environmental sense. We are installing low-pressure irrigation packages because they save water and energy and help us get more water to the crop, not because of the carbon credits. We may change a feeding ration because it will reduce our costs. But as we do those things, we’ll be recording how we are reducing our greenhouse gas emissions so we’ll be ready when a viable carbon market develops.
I think it’s time to set aside the fruitless debate in the farm community over whether climate change is real and influenced by human action. Instead, we need to consider how we can adapt to some climate change, because that’s a risk management tool, and how we can implement practices that enhance the sustainability of our farms. Any carbon credits we earn along the way will be a bonus. |
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For more information about the content of this document, contact Roger Bryan.
This document is maintained by Deb Sutton.
This information published to the web on January 15, 2006.
Last Reviewed/Revised on January 9, 2008.
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