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Last weeks message from high-profile scientists Dr Jeff Baldock and Professor Peter Grace was clear: soil carbon is intrinsically valuable, but on current understanding it seems unlikely to yield a meaningful return to farmers in a carbon trading scheme.
Dr Baldock, a leading CSIRO soil scientist, and Prof Grace, a climate change specialist at the Queensland University of Technology, sailed against the prevailing mood of optimism at the Carbon Coalitions Carbon Farming Conference in Orange.
Prof Grace observed that soil carbon will be traded under a scheme that also accounts for emissionsand right now, the farming ledger balances out with carbon inputs/outputs firmly in the red.
He showed modelling of emissions from a 400ha Darling Downs farm, with 300ha of crop, 12ha of trees, and some cattle, which collectively resulted in 416 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per year.
As a rule of thumb, mainstream science considers soil carbon sequestration potential in the more fertile, high-rainfall parts of eastern Australia to be around 500kg/ha/year. The reality might be considerably less.
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