The Carbon Trade Exchange today announced the commitment to offset the footprint of Australia’s fifth annual Carbon Farming Conference in Dubbo, 27-29 Sept.

The entire event will be offset for the full three days, this will include all travel for the conference speakers to and from the event, the electricity, as well as the on-site event set up and bump out. All delegates and sponsors will be responsible for their own carbon footprint.

The land-based offset credits will be purchased from India where the credit is derived from sugar cane waste in the form of biomass used to generate energy.

Louisa Kiely, Director for the Carbon Farming Conference said “This is a demonstration of how farmers will be able to benefit from generating and then selling carbon credits. At the moment these credits are only available for sourcing overseas, however the recently passed Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) provides the framework for carbon credits to be derived in Australia and the benefits will go straight back to Australian farmers”.

Ben Stuart, Director of Carbon Trading said “We fully support the CFI in Australia and wanted to show farmers what it could mean for them by participating in this market. Through the process of offsetting of an event we can show how land-based projects, that generate carbon credits, can make money. Businesses will be able to buy CFI credits in Australia to offset their own carbon footprint and count towards their overall emissions reductions with the money generated going back in to the Australian farming community”.

EcoView will be responsible for the footprint measurement using CarbonView. Fadi Geha, Managing Director of EcoView said “we are delighted to work with the Carbon Trade Exchange and the Carbon Farming Conference to assist with the measurement of this event. Offsetting events is a great way to highlight the value of how offsets can play an integral role in assisting Australian farmers to participate in the low carbon economy”.

Carbon offset credits are produced by projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are made available by companies like the Carbon Trade Exchange to purchase under compliance requirements or voluntary purposes. A carbon offset credit is equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide removed from the planet’s atmosphere. The money paid for each credit goes to funding either abatement or sequestration projects.

About Carbon Trade Exchange

Carbon Trade Exchange is a global carbon credit trading exchange. The exchange enables carbon buyers and sellers from around the world to trade most major voluntary carbon standards in an extremely efficient, end-to-end electronic process. The Carbon Trade Exchange is the world’s first web based electronic platform for Voluntary Carbon Credits (VERs) and international offset credits (Certified Emission Reductions or CERs).

Carbon Trade Exchange operates from offices in Australia, London and New York. They have a dynamic and highly experienced management team supported by a global board of Directors, led by founder and CEO Wayne Sharpe.

BREAKING NEWS

KEYNOTE SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT

Land management’s quiet American revolution

Keynote speaker at this year’s Carbon Farming Conference, Courtney White of the Quivira Coalition, is leading a revolution in land management in America. The former environmental activist abandoned confrontation with ranchers to forge a new community model for creating healthy ‘working landscapes’ by building bridges between ranchers, conservationists, public land managers, scientists and others. In 1997, with two farmers, he co-founded the Quivira Coalition in New Mexico which uses education and collaboration to promote progressive public and private land stewardship. More recently he has been focussed on ‘carbon ranching’ and the new agrarian movement (healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people) in the USA. Mr White is visiting Australia to meet ‘carbon farmers’ and healthy soils activists. Australia is the first country in the world to legislate a carbon offset scheme for farming projects, at a national level.

Courtney will address the topic: “The Carbon Puzzle: Reassembling Land and Livelihoods” at the Carbon Farming Conference (28-29 September, 2011, in Dubbo NSW). He will share his experiences at the forefront of change with the Quivira Coalition. During the Spanish Colonial era in the South Western states, mapmakers used the word 'Quivira' to designate unknown territory beyond the frontier; it was also a term for an elusive golden dream.

Mr White’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Farming, Acres Magazine, Rangelands, and the Natural Resources Journal. His essay “The Working Wilderness: a Call for a Land Health Movement” was published by Wendell Berry in 2005 in his collection of essays titled "The Way of Ignorance."  In 2008, Island Press published Courtney’s book Revolution on the Range: the Rise of a New Ranch in the American West. He co-edited, with Dr. Rick Knight, Conservation for a New Generation, also published by Island Press in 2008. 

Free Barista Bar Coffee!

There will be a special networking lounge area with complimentary ‘real’ coffee from a Barista Bar. This coffee service is sponsored by the Environmental Registry and the lounge area is furnished by Harvey Norman Dubbo.

Who Will Be The Carbon Converters?

Not every farmer will want to get involved in trading farm carbon offsets. In fact, at least 25% have already decided not to, according to a recent survey by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC). The study, called Decisions Made By Farmers That Relate To Climate Change, found there are three types of response to the need to change practices: ignore it (26%), want to do something but can’t afford it (19%), want to do something but need support (55%). This last group - called ‘Cash-poor long-term adaptors’ - tend to believe Climate Change is real and man-made and that we have a responsibility to do something about it. 

They are information seekers and intend to farm more sustainably if they can get support. They tend to have larger farms (average 5000 ha) than the other groups (1600 ha and 2700 ha), and they rely less on off-farm income. They average 55 years of age, their health is good and they feel up to handling change. So, the majority of farmers (74%) want to change to meet the challenge of Climate Change, but need financial support to do so. That is what farm carbon offsets from the Carbon Farming Initiative and the $1.8bn in adjustment funding from the Carbon Tax are designed to deliver to farmers. Now that’s something you won’t hear from rural politicians or regional press outlets.

How the market works (for Indians)

It is hoped that next year it will be Australian farmers, but Carbon offsets paid to farmers in India are being used to offset the emissions generated by this year’s Carbon Farming Conference. The land-based offset credits will be derived from sugar cane used to generate energy. Ben Stuart, Director of Carbon Trading Exchange said “We wanted to demonstrate to farmers what it could mean for them by stepping in to this market. Through the simple offsetting of an event we can show how land-based projects can make money. 

Businesses will be able to buy CFI credits in Australia to offset their own carbon footprint and count towards their overall emissions reductions and the money will be generated back in to the Australian farming community.” Ben will explain at the Conference how these offsets were created and traded-  from go to whoa. The entire event will be offset for the full three days, this will include the electricity for the event, as well as the on-site event set up and bump out (All delegates and sponsors will be responsible for their own carbon footprint.)

The Carbon Farming Conference

Farming Carbon - It's here. So reads the headline on MATTHEW CAWOOD's article in the Land online. "Amid the wreckage of other greenhouse gas abatement plans, the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) has passed through Parliament and looks secure as any legislation can. With bipartisan support - the Coalition has said that should it gain power, it will make modifications to the scheme, but not throw it out - the CFI is a platform with the potential to deliver a new source of income to landholders," he writes.

"The real Hallelulja moment for those who believe farmers should be paid to restore the nation's soils to health will come when a methodology is approved for soil carbon," said Michael Kiely of Carbon Farmers of Australia. "That should be soon. Carbon Farmers of Australia is 'sponsoring' a soil carbon methodology which will be submitted in a matter of days. Then we will see if those scientists cautioning farmers not to expect to increase their soil carbon levels much are right or are they like the experts who predicted that Columbus would sail off the end of the Earth because it was flat. They could only say that because they hadn't been there."

Read more...

Try reading this without laughing: “Coal seam gas (CSG) companies including Shell, Origin Energy and PetroChina have backed a public-relations campaign to dispel "alarmist" claims about the sector. The sector on Sunday launched a "We want CSG" campaign, saying it would show how CSG was providing much-needed opportunities for regional communities throughout NSW and Queensland at a time of economic insecurity. The campaign is backed by some of Australia's largest energy companies including AGL and Santos, and major foreign investors such as British Gas and ConocoPhillips, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) said in a statement."Our strong community feedback is that people want CSG," APPEA chief operating officer for eastern Australia Rick Wilkinson said. "They're increasingly frustrated that until now, the loudest voices in Australia's energy debate have largely been alarmist and their claims unsubstantiated. "This campaign marks the re-emergence of a fact-based energy security debate in Australia and gives voice to the many Australians who want new jobs, cleaner energy, and the revitalisation of regional communities that comes with the gas industry's expansion."
(Thank you, Climate Spectator)

So, is "people want CSG" one of the facts in the "fact-based energy security debate"? It appears that only the farmers getting fracked don't like it. So proximity determines attitude. Given the widespread ambitions the frackers have for democratising the experience, at some stage people won't want CSG. Everyone will have been fracked. Let the debate begin.

Do we have to frack the farm for prosperity?

On 'the revitalisation of regional communities that comes with the gas industry's expansion', there is an alternative to laying waste to the landscape and poisoning the water in the name of energy security: carbon farming. Restoring soils, regenerating farm landscapes, and revitalising regional communities while reducing emissions and reducing the CO2 overload. Trading farm-based offsets starts officially in November. That's why the central theme of this year's Carbon Farming Conference (28-29 September, Dubbo NSW) is 'preparing farmers to trade'. 

Read more...

"It may be that the CFI becomes the only surviving outcome of the Gillard government’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions," according to Business Spectator. "If the government’s carbon tax legislation gets through parliament, the Opposition has committed to repeal or substantially modify it if it wins the next election, as appears very likely. On the other hand the Carbon Farming Initiative, which is already through, will probably survive... Rather than repeal the legislation, [the Opposition] has indicated it will try to improve it. The concept also has support in farming circles, including the National Farmers’ Federation."

Read more.

"Livestock provides more food security than growing crops in many arid and semi-arid areas," said Lloyd Le Page, CEO of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (Cgiar), as aid organisations agreed on the importance of livestock in the current crisis in East Africa. Jeff Hill, director for policy at USAid, the US development arm, said underinvestment in pastoralist communities in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya have contributed to the extreme levels of food insecurity in the Horn of Africa's dry lands. "It is not drought, but vulnerability to drought that is eroding food security in these areas," Hill told agricultural experts at a meeting in Nairobi of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)., "and this vulnerability is a result of chronic under-investment. This is particularly true for the livestock-based systems which are and will be a dominant part of the arid and semi-arid lands." The ILRI, based in Nairobi, is a proponent of pastoralism and asserts that herding in dry areas makes better economic sense than irrigation.

Join us at the Carbon Farming Conference to find out more about sustainable farming and food security.

When people ask Jeremy Bradley about his stocking rate, he says that he likes to keep it at around 5 to 10 trillion to the gram. This, he says, is the optimum rate for accelerated soil building and biological carbon sequestration. Jeremy has been passionately involved with the carbon-farming movement since its inception and is building his 'extreme carbon-farming system' based on a blend of techniques such as those promoted by PA Yeomans, William Albrecht, Elaine Ingham and Christine Jones. He has a fascination with natural farming systems and their ability to regenerate soil fertility. This year he received an award from the Northern Rivers CMA for Innovations in Sustainable Agriculture for his work on increasing microbial biodiversity by introducing biological liquids into equipment used in normal horticulture and pasture systems.

With his trusty microscope and microbe brewer Jeremy is exploring the carbon-farming frontier and discovering how far and how fast it is possible to build carbon in a variety of farming systems. Working with minerals, air, water, biology and management, he is developing methodologies that will rebuild soil without investing in expensive equipment or inputs. See Jeremy at the Carbon Farming Conference, 28-29 September, 2011, at Dubbo NSW.

Geomancer Alanna Moore reveals how to harness invisible forces such as magnetism and energy lines to stimulate soil microbes, enhance plant growth and restore damaged land at the Carbon Farming Conference (28-29 September, 2011, Dubbo NSW). Well-known for her work with paramagnetic rock dust and “towers”, she also studies links between Permaculture, plant and animal well-being and Spirit of Landscape. Paramagnetism is based on sound scientific principles and has potential to increase soil carbon. Dowsing is commonly used for detecting subterranean water flows, but Alanna also uses it as the window on the spiritual dimension of the land. Her books include Stone Age Farming, The Wisdom of Water, Sensitive Permaculture, and Divining Earth Spirit.

"[We simply must find] more productive, safer methods that put carbon back in the soil to produce safer and better food," Al Gore urged Americans in a recent interview in TGDaily. The former Vice President also said we need to initiate an organic vegetarian diet for the general population since industrial agriculture is contributing to the relentless, growing problem of global warming. According to him, meat eating has prompted forests to clear due to higher demands for cattle, adding that synthetic nitrogen use in fertilizers continues to contribute to global warming. Mr Gore was only half wrong. The Tea Party's Michelle Bachmann - the leading Republican Presidential contender - said yesterday the cyclones and tempests slamming into the US are God's warning to Americans to change their ways. Maybe God's a vegetarian, too. In response to the laughter her comments elicited she said her remarks were meant to be a joke. And they were. Neither Mr Gore nor Ms Bachmann will be attending the Gala Awards Dinner at the Carbon Farming Conference, but there will be jokes aplenty and poetry and songs galore as part of our Talent Quest. Bring your guitar, your bush poetry and your best smile.